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.

Movie Review: The Duke of Burgundy

The Duke of Burgundy
Directed by: Peter Strickland.
Written by: Peter Strickland.
Starring: Sidse Babett Knudsen (Cynthia), Chiara D'Anna (Evelyn), Fatma Mohamed (The Carpenter).

The opening credits of The Duke of Burgundy are a tease – promising a movie that writer/director Peter Strickland doesn’t really deliver. Those opening credits so precisely re-create the openings of 1970s, Euro-soft-core pornography, that you cannot help to expect that is the type of movie you’re sitting down to. There’s even a “Perfume by”, which is ridiculous, since no one in the audience can really know what anything on screen smells like – although simply having that credit there makes you think about it. The actual opening scene of the movie perpetuates the ruse Strickland is playing a little bit longer. A young woman, Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), who has the perfect look to be the young woman in a movie like this, somehow both virginal and dripping with sexuality at the same time, rides her bike through the picturesque countryside. She arrives at the door of a ornate mansion, and rings the bell – and is immediately chastised by its owner, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), who again perfectly fits the bill for the “older” woman in a movie like this (which means she is in her 50s) – rich, severe, cold and cruel – she gives Evelyn one demeaning task after another, all the while she either completely ignores her, or is outwardly cruel. When Evelyn messes up Cynthia’s laundry – the pair disappear behind a door, so that Cynthia can “punish” Evelyn – the punishment having something to do with dripping liquids, and is clearly sexual in nature. So far, Strickland seems to be delivering precisely the movie those opening credits promised. But that’s just the beginning of the movie – one in which Strickland will do far more than simply pay homage to those 1970s Euro soft core films – much like in his last film, Berberian Sound Studio, where he did far more than simply pay homage to the Giallo horror films of the same era. Strickland has a deep love of those movies – who can feel that in how precisely he recreates aspects of them. But he isn’t interested in making a copy – he has something deeper in mind (SPOILER WARNING. If you plan the to see the film, you may want to stop reading here. I won’t reveal everything about the plot to be sure, but even the earlier twists, about which it is impossible not to write, are something who may well want preserved. You’ve been warned).

If you go into The Duke of Burgundy expecting it to be what it looks like – like the Seinfeld gang wanting to see Rochelle, Rochelle – a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk – you will likely be disappointed. Yes, the movie is about a Sadomasochistic lesbian relationship between Cynthia and Evelyn, but Strickland doesn’t dwell on the sex in movie. Yes, there are a few sex scenes – but surprisingly few. The movie does go into some detail about their sex life, but much of it isn’t actually the sex part – and can be rather un-erotic, as other people’s sexual fantasies often seem to outsiders, or else played for subdued humor (as in an hilarious sequence where a carpenter, specializing in bed with chambers, and human toilets, comes to speak to the pair). What The Duke of Burgundy is really about – and what makes it a universal story, even if it seems very specific – is what it means to really love someone, what you sacrifice, and what you indulge them with to make them happy, even if it doesn’t much interest you.

We start to see this in a sequence almost immediately following the first one, where Evelyn shows up, is chastised and demeaned by Cynthia, before being taken into the backroom for punishment. We see what is essentially the same sequence again – but this time, we don’t follow Evelyn, we follow Cynthia. She squeezes herself into the clothes, makes an effort with her hair, reads what are essentially cue cards trying to memorize what she is supposed to say, and drink glass after glass after glass of water (we will see this throughout the movie, and it takes on an edge of comedy eventually). Cynthia may be older, but Evelyn is the one in charge – and Cynthia is indulging her. She will do this throughout – from locking her into a box in the corner of the bedroom, and other things. They get into a fight when Cynthia comes to bed wearing something normal – and Evelyn is mad that she isn’t wearing the clothes she bought for her. “I need instructions to get into half the clothes you buy me. I just want to be comfortable for once” – Cynthia snaps back.

Do the pair actually love each other? I think Cynthia does indeed love Evelyn – which is why she indulges her in her sexual fantasies, even if they are not fantasies she shares. We all indulge our partners in something we don’t really like – whether it sadomasochistic fantasies or watching crappy TV. The pair of them are entomologists, and they spend a lot of time at lectures (curiously, only attended by women – I don’t think there is a man in the entire film). Cynthia sometimes lectures, and is quite clearly well-respected. Evelyn is more junior, and sometimes asks “silly” questions that embarrass her afterwards – but Cynthia always comforts and reassures her afterwards.

But at those same lectures, Evelyn cannot help noticing the woman who runs them – and her nice shiny, leather boots. Cynthia has a pair of those, and it’s one of Evelyn’s “duties” during their playtime to polish them. But what if she polished this other woman’s boots? What if this other woman were to chastise her, punish her. Evelyn eyes her hungrily, and her mind races. Does she love Cynthia – or is she simply using her? What do we make of some of what Cynthia does near the end of the movie – is she finally fed up, or is she just raising the stakes of the “game”.

Strickland is obsessive in the details of what is onscreen – those opening credits show that, but it runs through the rest of the movie as well. The costume are precisely, the score strangely erotic, yet also haunting, the sound mix is one of the most complex you will hear this this year. The movie verges of the avant garde at times – butterflies make an apt metaphor for the two women, and he has sequences here that almost bring to mind Stan Brakhage in that regard.

All of this is at a story that is at once very simple, and yet strangely moving and even somewhat profound. Strickland doesn’t clutter the movie with anything resembling a plot – nor even supporting characters. Aside from Cynthia and Evelyn, only the saleswoman and the speakers at the lectures even speak at all in the film. Strickland doesn’t need all those elements – he has everything he needs in the house, these two women (both actresses, by the way, are brilliant – especially Knudsen, who deserves Oscar consideration she will never receive) and their relationship. This is an early highlight of the year so far.

Movie Review: Berberian Sound Studio

Berberian Sound Studio
Directed by: Peter Strickland.
Written by: Peter Strickland.
Starring: Toby Jones (Gilderoy), Tonia Sotiropoulou (Elena), Cosimo Fusco (Francesco), Susanna Cappellaro (Veronica), Chiara D'Anna (Elisa), Eugenia Caruso (Claudia), Antonio Mancino (Santini), Lara Parmiani (Chiara), Fatma Mohamed (Silvia), Guido Adorni (Giovanni), Pal Toth (Massimo), Salvatore LI Causi (Fabio), Jozef Cseres (Massimo).

Berberian Sound Studio is a horror movie about the making of a horror movie that curiously contains no actual violence. All the horror exists inside the head of the main character – a mild mannered English foley artist who heads to Italy to work on a horror film – that sounds kind of like Dario Argento’s Suspiria from 1977. His name is Gilderoy and is played by Toby Jones – and if there’s anything better than Toby Jones playing a man named Gilderoy when you want a mild mannered Englishman, I don’t know what it is. Gilderoy isn’t used to making these types of films – he’s more of a nature documentary kind of guy – so the question immediately becomes why they hired him in the first place? And why don’t they seem to like him very much? And why won’t they reimburse him for the flight to get there? And what is with all those increasingly creepy letters from his mother back home?

Berberian Sound Studio is a fascinating film on several levels. For one, it shows how sound effects used to be achieved. As Gilderoy watches the horror unfolding onscreen (horror that we never see, as the camera remains fixated on Gilderoy’s face as he watches), he see him chopping fruits and vegetables, and doing sort of other tricks to make everything sound appropriately creepy and bloody. Try closing your eyes in these scenes after your know what the sound really is, and it’s still creepy.

But the film is even better as a character study of Gilderoy, who slowly comes unraveled. Is it the images on the screen – which we hear about repeatedly but never see – that starts him on his downward spiral towards madness? Or was he already on the downward slope when he arrived in Italy? And what of that strange flight that he insists he was on, but the studio accountants say they can find no record of? Is the finale all in Gilderoy’s head, or is there some real external threat out there?

It’s to the movie’s credit that it never really reveals the answers to these questions. Written and directed by Peter Strickland, Berberian Sound Studio is one of the creepiest movies of the year – a film that doesn’t rely on violence and blood in order to shock the audience, but rather on mood and atmosphere. As Gilderoy, Jones delivers an excellent performance – outwardly, he is the nicest, quietest man imaginable, even as he starts to lose his mind. But there is something off about him as well – even from the beginning, something creepy and just not quite right. Nowhere is this highlighted more than in the letters than periodically come from his mother back home, that get increasingly dark and violent.

Berberian Sound Studio is a movie made for movie lovers. It takes a look back at cinema’s past, and explores the power that movies hold over us. It is also one of the best horror movies of the year.