I haven’t liked a Paul Thomas
Anderson film in a long time, so I was pleased that I was pretty much pleased
by this attractive smooth as silk take on the British fashion scene circa 1955.
Of course there is much more to the film than just a brilliant and sometimes
biting satire of fashion and all that goes with it. Much of my glee is because
of Daniel Day Lewis’s brilliant performance, supposedly his last one. Maybe
he’ll come back in a few years and play Lady Macbeth or Martha in Who’s Afraid
Of Virginia Woolf?, nothing having to do with this great actor would be far
fetched or surprise me.
In the meantime we have this
great complex performance of his to relish and enjoy. In this film he plays a
famous world renowned fashion designer by the name of Reynolds Woodcock, (yes I
kid you not) who rules his elegant house of haute
couture with an iron fist a neurotic persona and his hard as nails
sister Cyril played with style and coldness by the great actress Lesley
Manville.
Cyril dressed
always in black with her dyed black hair tightly coiffed in a short cut moves
through the house and indeed the film like a small tank in high heels. She’s
tough and when she tells a character
“Don't pick a fight with me, you certainly won't come out alive. I'll go
right through you and it'll be you who ends up on the floor. Understood? You
understand. Manville is wonderful, and when she’s on, in tight close-ups you
can’t take your eyes off her.
Into their lives comes the young and inexperienced
Alma who Reynolds meets and picks up in a small village restaurant where Alma
is a waitress and is played by the newcomer Vicky Krieps. She becomes his muse,
moves into the house and they are soon in some kind of a relationship that
bubbles over in s&m games and unpleasant confrontations. We really don’t
know who these people are, they are sketched like one of Woodcock’s fashion
drawings with much left out.
As a glimpse into a made
up idea of the fashion world the movie is fun, full of richly textured scenes
on how a gown is made and even though some of the dresses are quite hideous, a
few are quite elegant and Krieps wears most of them with class and style. The
problem with the film is that it doesn’t know what it is, is it a woman’s
melodrama, a thriller, a romantic semi-comedy, and I think this schizoid road
map will be confusing and maybe even upsetting to an audience especially those
who have never seen a Paul Thomas Anderson film before.
Anderson uses the
film as a dress form to pin and clip his ideas on and sometimes this doesn’t
work all that well, but in spite of this the film offers an abundance of
pleasures. Then there are the critics with their points and ideas on Anderson’s
influences and in this film the winner by far is Alfred Hitchcock and I don’t
think I’ve ever come across so many silly and far out assumptions about a
film’s references and influences. Yes Anderson is a movie buff and knows and loves
film and the people who made them, his influences are deeply rooted and there’s
no denying that. My problem is the silly and wrong assumptions about the
Hitchcock glances in this film. A favorite one is that Cyril is Miss Danvers
from Rebecca, which just doesn’t fit Cyril. For one thing she is not evil or
crazy and as far as I can tell not a lesbian and is not trying to drive Alma
out. In fact several times she remarks that she is fond of Alma and is never
seen as plotting her demise. There are also remarks about Alma being
Hitchcock’s wife’s name, that the green dress refers to “Vertigo” and on and
on. It’s all quite silly, but for my two silly cents worth I would throw in
Josef Von Sternberg and Michael Powell as two influences on the film. The lush cinematography
is by an uncredited Anderson and the beautiful music score is by Jonny
Greenwood.
