Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang
I simply cannot fathom the waves
of critical adulation lapping onto the shores of this dramatic snooze of a
film.
Having decided that Alma (Vicky Krieps) is to become his new lover and muse, celebrated fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) naturally insists on creating a dress for her. |
Writer/director Paul Thomas
Anderson may have framed every scene with the care and precision that Reynolds
Woodcock employs while making his haute
couture dresses and gowns, but the story and characters remain unpalatable,
the pacing lethargic, and the result about as appealing as waiting for paint to
dry.
In short — although the viewing
experience seems to last forever — Phantom
Thread is a crushing bore.
Anderson’s films are always
challenging at best; they range from weirdly captivating (Inherent Vice, Boogie Nights),
to distastefully bizarre (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), to utterly
unwatchable (The Master). His
characters invariably are grotesque burlesques: parodies of actual people,
exaggerated to make a peculiar narrative point that rarely has anything to do
with the actual human condition.
Based on his artistic output,
Anderson feels like a misanthrope.
Phantom Thread is no different. Despite the
luxurious world in which these people inhabit, laced with beautiful things,
their souls are ugly and cruel. They deserve each other ... which I suspect is
Anderson’s ultimate point, but hardly an epiphany on which to hang a 130-minute
movie.
The setting is post-WWII London
in the 1950s, at the House of Woodcock, where the imperious Reynolds (Daniel
Day-Lewis) lives and designs at the center of British fashion: lavishly
expensive creations coveted by royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites,
debutants and their ilk. The firm’s mostly silent staff caters to every caprice
and demand of their fussy, fastidious and anal-retentive lord and master; the
stiffly condescending Reynolds expects no less.
Business matters and other
“unpleasant details” are handled by his starch-collared sister Cyril (Lesley
Manville); such details include hustling each of his casual lovers out the
door, once he tires of their companionship ... which, we gather, is a frequent
occurrence. Each, during her short stay, supplies a smidgen of inspiration
drawn from personality and physique; each departs having been transformed, to a
degree, into a “better” version of herself.
Reynolds also is an unrepentant
sexist pig: a coldly calculating martinet who doesn’t even seem to like his
most loyal and devoted clients. The dynamic feels like an uncomfortable gothic
mash-up of Pygmalion and Rebecca, with Manville’s Cyril standing
in as the chilly, omnipresent Mrs. Danvers.
The story begins as Reynolds’
most recent lover exits with a chagrined pout, leaving him mildly vexed and
seeking a fresh face. His interest is piqued under unusual circumstances: His
gaze locks with the eyes of a café waitress of Eastern European descent: Alma
(Vicky Krieps), whose movements become self-consciously flustered under his
stare ... and yet she silently gives as good as she gets.
It’s a delectable meet-cute
scene, laden with flirty potential and an undercurrent of something less
savory. I wish the rest of Anderson’s film could be this subtly engaging.
He asks her out; she accepts and
— with scarcely a pause for breath — he begs the indulgence of designing a
dress for her. This lengthy, late-night scene radiates a similarly incandescent
glow of erotic tension. Anderson — who also handles cinematography — lingers
over the entire process of measuring, draping and pinning, the sequence getting
even more sensual tension from the candle-like lighting.
Alma moves into the multi-story
House of Woodcock; their affair begins that quickly. Given the waspish control
Cyril exerts over everything, the resulting dynamic becomes a toxic romantic
triangle.
Alma doesn’t fit this highbrow
environment. She has the earthy, stocky presence of a country upbringing; she
looks and feels clumsy amid Reynolds’ delicate creations and aristocratic
clients. Alma also lacks the upper-class, woman-in-her-place compliance that
likely prompted his previous lovers to fawn over his slightest whim. Cyril’s
compressed lips twitch over Alma’s various uninformed transgressions, most
resulting from Reynolds’ eye-rollingly picayune demands.
Breakfast always is a “silent
time,” devoid of conversation, as Reynolds contemplates the challenges of his upcoming
day. Much the way Alfred Hitchcock suspensefully dialed up the volume of key
sounds in his early talkies — notably in 1929’s Blackmail — Anderson turns Alma’s pouring of tea, and preparation
of toast, into a screeching affront to Reynolds’ ludicrously delicate
sensibilities.
(I couldn’t help recalling a
classic Peanuts Sunday strip — May
28, 1961 — when Linus, responding to his tantrum-throwing older sister,
retreats to the kitchen to prepare a sandwich; when Lucy approaches, he archly
asks, “Am I buttering too loud for you?”)
Lacking the culture and
refinement of Reynolds’ previous lovers, Alma is less willing to meekly
tolerate his outbursts; she challenges him. When that doesn’t deliver positive
results, she petulantly — and grimly — takes a different tack.
At which point, their
relationship becomes ... awkward. And unhealthy.
Anderson bookends and
occasionally interrupts such increasingly unsavory proceedings with tight
close-ups of Alma, narrating these events to somebody initially unseen. This
adds nothing to an already tedious plotline, even when her mostly silent
listener’s identity eventually is revealed. By that point, the experience has
devolved into ho-hum tedium.
Perhaps more aggravating, given
Anderson’s focus on snaps, pins, fasteners and bolts of luxuriously expensive
material, we get no sense of Reynolds’ creative process: the point at which
scribbles on a page are transformed into an actual gown. The alluring results
simply appear in a given scene, courtesy
of costume designer Mark Bridges, as they’re carefully draped on an
appreciative princess (Lujza Richter), countess (Gina McKee) or society lady
(Julia Davis).
Their delight and gratitude slide
off Reynolds like water off a duck’s back; he responds with little more than a
stiff smile and slight nod.
The anticipated arrival of one
client prompts visible hostility: the quite wealthy but alcoholic and boorishly
vulgar Barbara Rose (Harriet Sansom Harris, touchingly socially inept).
Reynolds peevishly confesses to his sister that he’d rather not design a dress
for Barbara’s upcoming marriage to a high-society rake; Cyril archly reminds
him that this woman’s money helps maintain the house in which he lives and
works.
Alma’s eventual treatment of
Barbara, as a guest at the aforementioned wedding, is our first indication that
the House of Woodcock may have gained a third coldly calculating Borgia.
Day-Lewis’ performance certainly
cannot be faulted; he inhabits Reynolds with a meticulous totality that’s both
stunning and unsettling. Day-Lewis oozes silent contempt and stuffy arrogance,
his every movement laced with aristocratic disdain. Reynolds doesn’t talk much,
and Day-Lewis puts smarmy derision into every syllable of his brief sentences.
He always sounds like a puffed-up parent correcting a misbehaving child.
Manville’s Cyril is appropriately
sinister, her similarly arch comments laced with an undertone of ferocity;
there’s no doubt, push come to shove, who actually rules the House of Woodcock.
Cyril is not to be messed with.
Anderson gets just the right tone
from Krieps, a Luxembourg actress not known on these shores. At first blush,
there’s a sense that Alma isn’t yet finished, despite being an adult. Her
initially willingness to submit to Reynolds’ impulses feels unwholesome, as if
she’s surrendering too much, too quickly. Watching Krieps transform into —
well, something else — is far more
intriguing than the storyline in which she finds herself.
And that’s the major problem with
Phantom Thread. Despite Anderson’s
obvious effort to mimic the bodice-ripping, gothic anxiety favored by (for
example) the Bronte sisters, he doesn’t get anywhere near that level of
intensity. This overcooked and quite tedious nonsense is akin to late summer’s Mother!: not that tasteless, to be sure,
but just as self-indulgently dull.
3 comments:
So disappointing. I was looking forward to this movie; not now
I think it's worth seeing for DDL's performance. (Hard to imagine him winning an Oscar with Gary Oldman in the race, though.) I thought it was surprisingly long and drawn out... but liked a lot of it. Parts were just gorgeous. I had nervous anxiety through most of it.
Wish I would have read this review before I wasted nearly two hours watching this snoozefest waiting in vain for something to happen. Nice music and visuals but the analogy to watching paint dry is accurate.
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