Lucrecia Taormina laments consumerism and shopping fever, in the darkly comedic promo for Steven Wilson's Personal Shopper. In a sleek shopping mall, we are introduced to a man who has just received a huge wad of fifty pound notes. Ready to shop until he drops - quite literally - he visits different shops and counters, swapping parts of his body for bling and new things. As the shopper exchanges increasingly important parts of himself, from fingers to eyes to lips, the concept only gets more absurd and out of control, with Taormina's flair for the unusual remaining utterly engaging throughout. There's a terrific performance by Robert Lane as the deluded consumer, while DoP Pieter Snyman creates a hyperreal aesthetic through soft beauty lighting and clinical colour palettes of white and shiny metal. If Apple did body horror adverts, this is what they would look like. Fascinating work.
Rob Ulitski - 11th Feb 2021