REVIEW: Phantom Thread

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
2017 Romance Drama
2 hours, 10 minutes
From Focus Features

Starring
Daniel Day-Lewis
Vicky Krieps
Lesley Manville

I must have slipped into my haute couture period.  Recently I was captivated by the television miniseries, The Collection, and this week comes the Versace story.  As for this one, I confess my only interest was in seeing Day-Lewis and he is most certainly the best thing about this film.

Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a 1950's London dressmaker who has the haute down pat.  Arrogant, fussy, self-absorbed and short-tempered, he comes across a much younger waitress, Alma (Krieps), and is instantly infatuated to such an extent that she becomes his muse and lover.  She works on dresses along with his other employees but also models because he likes that she has broad shoulders, a perfect belly and small breasts.

Once ensconced in his hermetic digs, it seems that she can't do much of anything to please him, although clearly no one can.  While she's soft-spoken and seemingly passive, he soon learns there's more to the disruptive (in his opinion) young woman than he thought.  She makes stabs at trying to change him but once she becomes Mrs. Woodcock, things get a little frostier as she takes on a new determination.   

As the film opens, Alma's face fills the screen as she says Reynolds has made my dreams come true.  And I have given him what he desires most in return... every piece of me.  What she does not tell us is that she intends to take a few pieces of him along the way as well.  The ending is suitably bizarre.

I keep trying to understand writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson movies but I guess I'm just not there yet.  He's up to something and I haven't quite figured out what it is.  And I want to... I always want to.  His only film that I thought was truly noteworthy was Boogie Nights, and let's face it, even that was waaayyy out there.  His films turn out to be too subtle, too dark and too gloomy for me.  I could barely tolerate There Will Be Blood (a DD-L Oscar win), I haven't the words to say how much I detested Magnolia and The Master disturbed me, although that was the point.

It is a slow movie, not boring-slow but covering-ALL-the-details-slow.  Anderson has his cameras scan everything in a room, linger on a dress, watch a character stare, etc.  I can deal with it and agree that sometimes that approach is exactly what is needed to spin a web, create a mood.  But your average moviegoer with a bucket of overly-buttered popcorn and a king-sized Coke is gonna be nodding off when it's all consumed.  Or more to the point, he probably won't be seeing the decidedly art house film in the first place.  

Here's my loudest moan.  Not only are there sudden leaps in characterization (what???? is something I heard my inner voice say) but Anderson's characters, at least here, remain largely unknown.  He's tortured and misogynistic. Why?  Why is he so fascinated with this curiously mellow young woman?  I don't wanna hear about the small breasts.  If the film would have taken place a decade later, she would have been a flower child.  Where's the background on them?  I guess Anderson doesn't wants us to know too much.  This you-work-it-out-for-yourself approach that he seems to take a delight in creates a brain freeze for me.  I need a few more dots connected.  This kind of subtlety leads to disinterest.

On a more upbeat note, the reason I went in the first place definitely registered.  If anyone I detect is a genius, it is Day-Lewis.  He is a brilliant craftsman, always highly researched and authentic, who reportedly lives in his character throughout filming.  I treasure him as an actor and hope that this is not, as he says, his final film.  With all that said, I don't think this will be one of his more memorable performances or films.

There's more good news in Manville who's been around a long time but never gathered much fame in the states.  She offers up a gloriously nuanced performance as Cyril, Reynolds' steely-eyed spinster sister and business partner.  When she and Day-Lewis were in the same scene, I needed another set of eyes.

I had never seen Krieps, who hails from Luxembourg, in a film nor had I heard of her.  Alma is overcome by his attention to her (I did like how the actress conveyed that) but for me I could not see what he saw in her, hard as I tried.  Actually, their mutual fascination is so central to the film and my inability to fully relate to it is... well, it's too bad.  

The musical score by Jonny Greenwood was a joy indeed... the use of so many old standards touched me.  And certainly Anderson gets the credit for how certain music was used so effectively in particular scenes ... very clever indeed.



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