Movie Review: In Fabric

In Fabric **** / *****

Directed by: Peter Strickland.

Written by: Peter Strickland   

Starring: Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Sheila), Fatma Mohamed (Miss Luckmoore), Gwendoline Christie (Gwen), Jaygann Ayeh (Vince), Hayley Squires (Babs), Leo Bill (Reg Speaks), Richard Bremmer (Mr. Lundy), Sidse Babett Knudsen (Jill).

 

Peter Strickland has made a career out of making weird, fetishistic horror films that show off his love of the lower class of European art house films of the 1970s. The excellent Berberian Sound Studio is literally about a British sound designer who goes to work on a giallo film, and is slowly driven insane (or always was – and just slowly reveals it) and The Duke of Burgundy disguises itself as a soft core porn film, but uses that to explore its unconventional central relationship with more thought and care that most movies would even attempt. His latest film is In Fabric – and it is clearly the most insane film on his resume, and perhaps the most out and out entertaining, even if it’s also the least ambitious of these three films. Still, it’s such an insane visual and aural feast, I find it impossible to complain.

 

The film is basically split into two separate stories – although the first is significantly longer – and follows the strange journey of a killer red dress. In the first story, Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) plays a newly divorced, middle age bank teller – who works for a pair of bosses who would fit in at the company in Office Space – who leaves with her teenage son, Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), whose girlfriend Gwen (a delightful Gwendoline Christie) is always around, and rubs their sex life in Sheila’s face. Sheila wants to get back out into the dating world – and what better way to do that other than to hit the sales post-Christmas. She finds a strange store, and an even stranger sales woman – Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed – a Strickland favorite), who sells Sheila a killer red dress – and things get stranger and stranger. In the second story, that red dress is bought at a second hand shop, and forced onto Reg (Leo Bill) as a bachelor party prank, and then ends up in the hands of his fiancé, Babs (the wonderful Hayley Squires) – again, with horrific results.

 

So, yes, In Fabric is a horror movie about a dress. The film knows damn well that its premise is ridiculous, and instead of hiding that fact, it embraces it outright. The scenes set in the store where the dress was sold – where Miss Luckmore may well be strange, but her boss Mr. Lundy (Richard Bremmer) could easily be stranger – would not be out of place as a non-sequitur on Twin Peaks. Strickland, who has always embraced outlandish visual tricks, outdoes himself here – the film starts off over the top, and just keeps going. He also finds a strange undercurrent of just out and out hilarious moments throughout the film – which makes the films more disturbing moments stick even more.

 

But perhaps the smartest thing he does is cast the film well. Yes, Fatma Mohamed is insane and brilliant, but Marianne Jean-Baptiste is the MVP here, somehow managing to ground this film is some sort of believable reality, even though it is about a killer dress. Everyone in her part of the film feels like they are out to get her in some way, shape or form, even while being endlessly polite. Leo Bill, who has the lead role in the second half, cannot quite match Baptiste, but he’s fine – but it’s Squires, who isn’t really a Bridezilla as I’ve heard her referred to elsewhere – but it is certainly a little bit of a nag, and talks non-stop (one moment she keeps talking gets perhaps the biggest laugh in the film).

 

If there is a larger message to In Fabric it is clearly about consumer culture, giving us unrealistic expectations as to what one shopping trip, one purchase can actually do for us, as well as the never ending drudgery of heading to work day-after-day, doing the same thing again and again. But the film hardly needs that extra messaging – the surface of In Fabric provides so many delights, it hardly matters. This is a crazy film – and I loved every frame.