Bewitching stitching

Star Day-Lewis helps auteur Anderson weave something memorable in ‘Phantom Thread’

In recent years, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson became interested in the subject of dressmaking and, as a result, in the life of Cristobal Balenciaga, a Spanish fashion designer who thrived in the years following World War II. ¶ He had also been looking for another film on which to collaborate with acclaimed actor Daniel Day-Lewis, star of his fascinating and violent 2007 drama, “There Will Be Blood,” for which Day-Lewis won the best-actor Academy Award.¶ The result is “Phantom Thread,” a gorgeous, mysterious and seductive piece of work that ranks up there with the best films of 2017. Like a fine dress, it is beautifully sewn and, when finished, an impactful piece of art.

Anderson says he saw Day-Lewis as an ideal choice to play a dressmaker apparently inspired by the handsome Balenciaga. Day-Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock is a confirmed bachelor and the namesake of The House of Woodcock, a business in 1950s London that creates exquisite dresses for royals, movie stars, socialites and other prominent women.

Reynolds is the creative force behind the business, but it is run largely by his unmarried sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), who also helps manage his personal life. For example, when, early in the film, Reynolds has clearly tired of his lover of the moment, it is Cyril who offers to remove the woman from her brother’s life. “She’s getting fat sitting around,” Cyril says, “waiting for you to fall in love with her again.”

Women, who have this nasty habit of needing attention from Reynolds, disrupt his beloved routines, and thus his house, and thus the business run out of it. It is in the house that he first sketches a dress and that, eventually, it is sewn by a number of women who climb the beautiful spiral staircase to an upper-level workspace where they cut and stitch until his vision is realized.

FOCUS FEATURES Daniel Day-Lewis stars as a dressmaker, and Vicky Krieps is his muse in “Phantom Thread.”