Sunday, December 31, 2017

"Phantom Thread"

 ½ 

Cool and detached, beautiful yet untouchable, Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread is like the haute couture at its core.  It's exquisite, even mesmerizing, but it's not intended for mass consumption, something that doesn't bother the film or the filmmaker in the slightest.

It's certainly more accessible -- and engaging -- than Anderson's last film, the inscrutable (and, I thought, insufferable) The Master, which is due in part to the galvanizing presence of Daniel Day-Lewis in what the actor claims is his final role.  Yet for all the attention he's getting, it's really a three-person show, with a luminous Luxembourger actress named Vicky Krieps nearly stealing the film away from Day-Lewis, and an icily perfect Lesley Manville in a performance that might unsettle evenRebecca's Mrs. Danvers.

Day-Lewis and Manville play the brother-sister proprietors of the House of Woodcock, London's most fashionable, prestigious, exclusive creators of women's fashion.  The all gowns, bridal dresses, and impossibly high-priced, hand-made designs are created by Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis), while sister Cyril makes the whole place run, overseeing the hand-crafting of a team of dressmakers.

And like the dresses, every individual moment, every single frame of Phantom Thread shows impossible care, with luxurious, almost tactile cinematography (by Anderson himself) and, of course, exquisite costumes and production design.

But it would be impossible to admit that the first half of the film labors against pretentiousness.  Anderson and Day-Lewis focus on the spoiled, embittered mannerisms of Reynolds Woodcock, meandering toward the story rather than heading into it full-bore; Phantom Thread, like The Master, makes it easy to long for the relentlessly hyperactive Anderson of Magnolia or Boogie Nights.

As Woodcock finds and woos a young immigrant waitress named Alma (Krieps, who's ravishing from her first moment on screen), it isn't clear exactly where Phantom Thread is heading.  Just as that becomes problematic, though, the film finds its way and becomes something quite unexpected.

Woodcock falls for Alma, but in a restrained and remote sort of way, and as he does the complicated and unnerving relationship with his sister Cyril looms at the edges of the story -- which veers yet again into a direction that it's almost impossible to foresee.  Gradually, Phantom Thread becomes a sinister sort of thriller, playing games both with its characters and its audience that are wildly intriguing and moderately off-putting.

Alma and Reynolds develop a perverse relationship in which they always seem to be jockeying for power both with each other and with Cyril.  The last hour of Phantom Thread is vastly superior to the first as Anderson finds the sweet spot between fetishistic filmmaking and the fetishistic business at the heart of the story.

How Anderson managed to delve into such a specific and closed-off world and come out with a story that illuminates dark areas of human interaction is in itself a fascinating accomplishment, one that makes the over-indulgences of the film's first half mostly worth slogging through.

Phantom Thread is indeed beautiful, but like the hidden messages that Woodcock stitches into the seams of his creations, it yields something surprising and unexpected.  It won't be to everyone's taste, in some ways I'm not entirely sure it was to mine, but just because I dress in jeans and sneakers doesn't mean I can't appreciate the wonders of high fashion, even if I have no interest in wearing it myself.



Viewed December 30, 2017 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2015

1 comment:

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