Sew long to a truly magnificent actor
ARRIVING almost as if in a time capsule from the early 1950s, Paul Thomas Anderson’s exquisitely idiosyncratic Phantom Thread extends an invitation into an exclusive cocoon occupied by cardcarrying eccentrics who demonstrate that all is fair in love and the world of haute couture.
Less grandiose than the writer-director’s last three features, as well as more precision-controlled, this is a melodrama of love, desire and gamesmanship among three control freaks played out in a veritable hothouse in which the winner will be determined by who wilts last. More unconventional and downright weird on a moment-to-moment basis than it is in overall design and intent, it’s a singular work played out mostly in small rooms that harks back to psychological melodramas of the 1940s/’50s but hits stylistic notes entirely its own. Anderson’s ardent fans will be the first in line, while others will be drawn to see star Daniel Day-Lewis in what he has announced will be his final film appearance. We can all hope he one day changes his mind.
The post-World War II financial stress felt by most Britons seems not to have encroached upon the exalted enclave of high fashion and neurotic self-concern inhabited by dashing middle-aged clothing designer Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis). An elegant perfectionist whose clients seem to be mostly dowagers of a certain age willing and able to pay for elegant new garments every time they appear in society, the often silent man has cultivated an air of imperturbable selfabsorption.
You would think that Woodcock had the most important job in the world by the “do not disturb” vibes he emanates. His silences are meant to seem profound, all-important to his creative process.
The only person who is certain to know the full truth about him is his stern and proper sister, Cyril (the estimable Lesley Manville), the gatekeeper who lives to keep her brother’s life immaculately organised and free of distractions. Enter a young female wild card fated to upset THE household’s suffocating equilibrium. Alma (Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps) is a waitress, seems to be in her early 30s, is polite and proper but with a ready smile and fair-game disposition. Woodcock’s conversational approach with her is far from normal, but he’s funny, disarmingly frank without actually revealing anything – a seductive odd duck. He brings her home but nothing happens (Cyril is there to greet them) and, when it eventually does, we see nothing of it. On the surface, it’s a very chaste work.
While there is precious little overt “drama” per se, before you know it you’ve become happily ensconced in a peculiar world you’ve never visited or even imagined before. The initial expectation is that a jealous and protective Cyril will try to use her wiles to outmanoeuvre Alma and send her packing, but this obvious plot line is subverted before long. A more useful key to discovering what’s going on is one character’s reference to a staring contest, with the implication that whoever blinks first loses.
Peculiarities
The characters, and the film they inhabit, are loaded with peculiarities and perversities large and small. After Woodcock has brought Alma home, the designer in a professional capacity takes precise measurements of every possible angle and contour of her body and declares, “You’re perfect. It’s my job to keep you so,” disputing her belief that she’s too flatchested. Quite apart from Krieps’s wonderfully subtle performance, it was very shrewd of Anderson to cast a little-known actress with no associative baggage and who’s pretty but perhaps not conventionally so; at times reminiscent of Meryl Streep as well as Julianne Moore, she can be quite alluring indeed when she comes alive with humour, energy and desire, but when standing dutifully at attention in uniform with the many other young women in Woodcock’s employ, she stands out barely at all.
As the guardian of all things Woodcock, professionally and personally, Manville commandingly exerts the force that convinces one and all that she maintains an iron grip on her brother’s professional eminence and personal equilibrium – until, perhaps, she doesn’t, which is when things get really interesting. That the film arguably reaches its grand turning point in a scene devoted to Woodcock eating an omelette says something about the film’s unrelenting oddness.
Astonishingly, the Londonborn Day-Lewis hasn’t played an Englishman in a film since Stars and Bars in 1988, but he plays a consummate one here, a perfectionist whose image and role in society he has tailored with the same fastidiousness he applies to his work. With Alma he becomes playful at times but at others shuts her out; being preoccupied and impossibly self-centered are part of a persona that’s been as immaculately crafted as his best fashion creations.
Playing a “difficult” artist is something Day-Lewis knows something about – whether it’s because he is one himself or just knows a lot of them can be left to others to decide. But the man he’s created on-screen here is a fascinating combination of knowingly displayed temperament, keen discernment, wizardly talent, emotional evasion, bewildering about-faces, superhuman discipline and, ultimately, childlike vulnerability.
In the end, Woodcock may, or may not, be the most powerful and resilient character in the piece, but he’s supremely complex and fascinating to observe. – Hollywood Reporter