Dark glamour
Day-Lewis weaves brilliant romance in ‘Phantom Thread’
Paul Thomas Anderson's latest is the hothouse flower “Phantom Thread,” a dreamy Gothic romance set in the rarefied world of British high fashion in the 1950s. Reynolds Woodcock (three-time Academy Award-winner Daniel Day-Lewis in what is supposedly his swan song performance) is a highstrung fashion designer with borderline Asperger's syndrome, whose clients and patrons include British and French royalty.
The film begins with a day in the life of Reynolds, who works pen and pad in hand at a lavish breakfast table. His No. 2 is his no-nonsense older sister, Cyril Woodcock (Lesley Manville). She is the one who disposes of the women — in opening scenes Johanna (Camilla Rutherford) — in his life when they begin to bore her brother, who drives his Bristol 404 sports car like a demon. Reynolds, whose profile would befit a Roman emperor, is a bit of a Bluebeard.
Into his life comes Alma (Vicky Krieps), whose name means “soul” in Spanish and whose face could have adorned a Renaissance painting. Alma is a tall, slender, beautiful young woman, who shares his attraction and, in addition to that face, has the perfect measurements to model the House of Woodcock's latest season of clothes.
Alma respects Reynolds, even if one of his creations looks like upholstery ripped from a 1956 Morris Minor interior. But she also has spunk, which annoys him, and she questions his haughty behavior, which annoys him even more. Krieps and Day-Lewis play these at times heated, at times funny scenes marvelously together.
Comparisons have been made between “Phantom Thread” (I do not love that title) and Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 Oscar-winning Gothic romance “Rebecca” and I see the connections.
The House of Woodcock, which is also a lavish London townhouse, is this film's Manderley, the property and manor house of Laurence Olivier's dark romantic hero of “Rebecca,” Maxim de Winter. Cyril is Mrs. Danvers, the menacing housekeeper of Hitchcock's film, although Manville's Cyril has so many more facets, many of them amusing, and Alma is Joan Fontaine's timid, new Mrs. de Winter, although Alma, who cooks
a mighty ambiguous wild mushroom omelet, is no victim-in-waiting.
But “Phantom Thread” just as readily recalls the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion, which is the basis of the stage and screen musical “My Fair Lady.” I half expected Day-Lewis to break into “I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
Drenched in romantic music by Debussy, Faure and Berlioz and composer Jonny Greenwood, who also provides Bernard Herrmann-like strings, “Phantom Thread” is a battle of wills between Reynolds, who disposes of his lovers, and Alma, who will not be disposed of. Among the film's many attractions is Anderson's evocation of the working world of a fashion house with its seamstresses toiling over what can only be called a work of art, a sculptural, sometimes spooky (check out the ghost's wedding dress) amalgamation of lace, tulle and satin worth its place in a museum. (“Phantom Thread” contains profanity.)