Tag: kristen stewart

JT LeRoy

Posted on by victorfraga

T/dropcap]here are at least two ways you can express yourself. You can express yourself through your words and you can express yourself through your body. JT LeRoy expressed himself through the words of Laura Albert and the body of her sister-in-law Savannah Knoop. His readers were blithely unaware that they were being doubly cheated. Firstly, they were cheated because JT was a girl pretending to impersonate a boy, donning a wig and huge sunglasses in order to conceal her real gender. Secondly, because Savannah did not write the three books for which JT LeRoy became famous. Laura concocted the entire predicament of the “teenage boy” and his experiences of poverty, drug use, and emotional and sexual abuse. Does it sound complicated? Well, it is complicated. Oscar Wilde explains it in the film opening: “the truth is rarely pure and never simple”.

Laura and and Savannah (played here by Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart, respectively) tricked everyone. Famous fans of the “teenage boy” included Gus Van Sant, Madonna, Winona Ryder, Carrie Fisher, Bono Vox and Courtney Love. Madonna sent LeRoy a Kaballah book. Courtney Love (playing herself) met LeRoy and was genuinely impressed by the shy and introspective “boy”. Until his real identity is revealed at the end of the film. “What the fuck???”, cries out a shocked Love.

The film starts in 2001 when Savannah was first asked to cross-dress and stand in for the mysterious male writer. Eventually, she fully embodied the character, which she continued to do for six years. To the point that Laura told her: “JT now belongs to both of us, not just me!”. Savannah – who had a boyfriend who knew of the entire ordeal – starts a relationship with an actress called Eva Avalon (who’s in reality a fictitious “stand-in” for Asia Argento, played here by Diane Kruger). Savannah and Eva have sex, but it’s not entirely clear whether Eva immediately realised that “JT” was a female. Savannah eventually tells her boyfriend: “I fucked Eva”. Maybe she penetrated Eva with a fake penis – very much à la Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberley Peirce, 2000). But of course “fucking” isn’t confined to penetration. Maybe she “fucked” Eva in a different way. It’s up to you to imagine the details. And to decide whether such sexual interaction did indeed take place in real life with Asia Argento.

JT LeRoy is based on Savannah Knoop’s memoirs Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy. The very existence of this film and of this book add two more layers of complexity to the JT LeRoy saga. How much did Savannah make up in her literary piece? And how much is a figment of Justin Kelly’s (the film director) imagination? We might never find out. This is why JT LeRoy is a very intelligent and witty film. It refuses to conform to the established orthodoxy of truth.

The choice to cast Kristen Stewart in the main role was not gratuitous. The American model-turned-actress – just like Savannah – is bisexual. Plus, Stewart is extremely familiar with the perks and the pitfalls of celebrity life, including the awkward moments at press conferences (Savannah/JT often has to fend off very intrusive questions about her biological gender).

Ultimately, JT LeRoy is a finely acted and crafted study of the relationship between artistry and identity. It raises moral and ethical questions: to what extent is one allowed to remould their sense of self? I have the answer for you: there is no limit. Laura and Savannah did nothing wrong. They are not a literary forgers, unlike Lee Israel (who adulterated material created by other people). Instead, they conceived a clever ruse. Character appropriation is in the very essence of literature and film. Cinema is all about wearing someone else’s shoes. This is the testament that human sensibility is indeed universal.

JT LeRoy was the closing gala film at BFI Flare, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 16th. On VoD the following Monday.

Personal Shopper

Posted on by mjbstaging

The world-famous American actress and model Kristen Stewart has teamed up with the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas for the second time (after 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria), now in a film with a peculiarly different premise. The helmer decided to focus on the subject of celebrity again, but this time moving from a Lesbian drama taking place in idyllic Switzerland to a ghost story set in a very urban Paris.

The big question of course is: how do you blend horror devices, which are meant to be jarring and unsettling, with a fashion environment, where beauty and splendour are meant to prevail? Assayas has set a very difficult quest upon himself, albeit not an impossible one. France does not a a strong and consistent tradition in the horror genre, and instead a few sporadic classics such as Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) and Eyes without a Face (Georges Franju/Claude Sautet, 1960). So Assayas had to use his very own blueprint in order to come up with personal variant of French horror. The outcome has been very divisive: Assayas received the Best Director Ex-Aequo prize last year at Cannes Film Festival, but the film was also booed in the same event. Personal Shopper is indeed an audacious and creative pieces, but a number of flaws make it a little incoherent and difficult to engage with.

Maureen Cartwright (Stewart) is a young American working in Paris as a personal shopper for a celebrity called Keira (Nora von Walstatten). She has the ability to communicate with spirits, just like her recently deceased twin brother. She is now trying to communicate with her recently deceased twin brother, and it’s other ghosts that cross her path. She is determined, however, to remain in the French capital until she has spoken to her dead sibling. She begins to receive strangely ambiguous text messages on her telephone, from an unknown source. She travels to London for a work errand, but she’s consistently harassed by the stranger on the phone on her way there. Are the dead now able to communicate through 21st century technology, or is someone pulling a prank on Maureen?

personalshopper2
There are elements of paranormal activity, fashion and erotica in this very unusual horror flick

The scares throughout the film are very sparse, maintain the “creepy-glam” atmosphere throughout. There are elements of erotica, paranormal activity, murder and fashion in this multi-flavoured film gumbo (or perhaps casserole?). But this multitude of genres and references make the film a little disjointed and fragmented, much like a broken mirror. For example, we never find out why Maureen is in Paris, what exactly happened to her brother and why the whole saga is in English. I wonder whether French nationalists were outraged at the absence of their own language, surely an American worker would working in Paris be expected to pick up French? Maybe Personal Shopper does not want to be perceived as French film at all, but instead as an international endeavour.

Aesthetically, the film is also very hybrid. Entities probably don’t care much about fashion (they always seem to wear the same attire, don’t they?), so the idea of them creeping into this plush and colourful world is a little preposterous. Some nicely timed flying objects and green ectoplasms will make you jump from your seat, but overall a feeling a awkwardness will linger, and the inevitable WTF will occasionally spring to mind. Assayas is a very talented and bold filmmaker, but he still has some edges to polish in this newly-created horror-fashion “genre”.

Personal Shopper was out in cinemas on Friday, March 17th (2017). On Disney + UK on Friday, July 22nd (2022). Also available on other platforms.