The Cinematheque

“[The Store] captures customs and ceremonies … The film acts as a kind of litmus test of that most indigenous of American behaviours—shopping.”

Mary-Lou Weisman, The New Republic

A luxurious companion film to Model, The Store relocates the concept of attraction from powerful images to the fine art of the coercive sales pitch. The pitch is this: in the many floors of the Dallas, Texas, flagship store of high-end retailer Neiman-Marcus, there is something for you. The high-attention cajoling, encouraging, and celebrating on offer, not to mention the educational lectures on style, exist to organize people into their own hyper-individuated box (or fitting room), in which they can supplant the selective world of the model and become one themselves. Wiseman sets the film in the high-traffic winter holiday season and doesn’t shy away from excess—sable, diamonds, and the overfamiliar demands of repeat customers. From employee orientation to finalized sale, The Store, and its bygone all-in-one in-person experience, houses within it a designer version of the near-hypnotic training Wiseman finds everywhere in American life.

“In The Store, as Wiseman has pointed out, the viewer can see the doctors, lawyers, and judges who run the institutions in his other films and learn how they spend their money.”

Glenn Rifkin, The New York Times

“If you’re going to understand something about society, you’ve got to understand something about the people with power, too. You’ve got to know something about what the rich person’s values, experiences, preferences are. And you’ve got to start thinking about the relationships between all these things.”

Frederick Wiseman