Story of perverse love tailored to timelessness
Phantom Thread (out of 4) Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Opens Friday at the Varsity. 130 minutes. 14A
They say all men must put on their trousers one leg at a time, no matter how great or small they may be.
Not Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), dressmaker extraordinaire. He seems to jump into both pant legs simultaneously, as part of a brisk morning ritual that includes taming his hair with two brushes at once.
He’s the cloth of Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s fashionable new drama, which is set in-1950s London and set to the evocative piano and strings of Jonny Greenwood’s score. But two women are the scissors — three if you include Woodcock’s late mother, who haunts him still.
Woodcock’s journey, as often happens to cocksure protagonists in writer/director Anderson’s films, will be to discover how much of his fate is in the hands of others. He’s more rigid and less self-aware than Daniel Plainview, the wily oil baron Day-Lewis played in There Will Be Blood, his previous PTA joint.
The flesh-and-blood women in Woodcock’s immaculate hermitage are his all-seeing sister Cyril (Lesley Manville, splendid) and his newly acquired obsession and lover Alma (Vicky Krieps, a revelation).
Cyril makes her presence felt early on. She manages the House of Woodcock, a London townhouse with a Hitchcockian spiral staircase where her brother the couturier fashions lavish dresses for his wealthy and infatuated patrons. His creations are stitched by a team of nearly silent women, clad in white.
This scenario makes Woodcock seem like a cult leader — which he is, in many respects. Cyril also acts as her brother’s gatekeeper in romantic matters, swiftly dispatching women he has grown tired of or who — horrors! — interrupt the churchlike solemnity of his breakfast routine.
“I simply don’t have time for confrontations,” Woodcock tells one un-
The cocksure protagonist’s journey is to discover how much of his fate is in the hands of others
happy woman, who is about to feel a metaphorical trap door open beneath her. The lever is pulled by Cyril, who obliges Woodcock, but also judges him.
Our needle-pushing genius repairs to the country for even more solace, driving recklessly like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. There he meets Alma, a stately waitress in a hotel restaurant who is willing to take his orders, in breakfast terms. She’s con- siderably less willing to take his guff.
She tolerates his rude comments and actions — he disparages the size of her breasts and wipes off her lipstick — and she’s attracted to him enough to share his bed and to serve as his muse for new dress designs.
But Alma, like Cyril, has Woodcock’s number, which is that of a boyman with serious mommy issues. Recall that cloth-and-scissors analogy above.
Woodcock will, of course, fall under Alma’s spell, all the while thinking that he has the upper hand in the relationship. There is love in this match, but only a perverse kind that might please a maternal ghost — as would the film’s curious dearth of sexual intimacy. There’s also some drollery, as carefully threaded as the secret messages Woodcock sews into his dresses like a boy scout earning a merit badge for philosophy.
It’s somewhat daunting to consider that Phantom Thread, for all of its abundant talent and technical flourishes (it’s a shoo-in for costume design awards) is essentially a story of an entitled male’s reckoning.
This could make the film seem more of a 2018 headlines responder than a 1950s chamber piece, but the timeliness is a happy accident. I wish Anderson had done more with Manville, who improves every film she’s in, but increasing her screen time might have meant fewer moments with Luxembourg-born actress Krieps, who vaults to the A-list with a performance that recalls a young Meryl Streep.
Day-Lewis has hinted that his role in Phantom Thread will be his last for the screen. I seriously doubt this, just as I am sure he will work once again with Paul Thomas Anderson. An actor of his immense skill and precision can’t refuse a filmmaker of such like mind.