A remarkable departure in this, the latest from
Peter Strickland. I blanche when directors of offbeat movies are casually lumped in with David Lynch, but Strickland earns such a comparison, sharing with Lynch a drive to mine the mundaneness of his past for the menace lurking beneath. Like his previous horror-ish movie BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO the drab colors of the 70s/80s decor are pungent with a soul-deep rot lurking beneath; the analog tackiness of a TV advert for a department store's post-holiday sale warns us that only devil's bargains are to be struck there.
Strickland's artistry has never been so arch as to eliminate humor, but he leans harder into comedy here, contrasting the wilfully British reserve of his characters against the encroaching surreality and alienness of his design. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is particularly affecting as a working class single mother, immediately landing our sympathy for being a normal person just trying to get through the damn day, not deserving to be caught in the gyre of a Peter Strickland picture. (She's marvelous in her scenes alongside Stickland company MVP Fatma Mohamed, whose intricately verbose sales pitches are simply too welcoming to be trusted.)
Strickland shares with Lynch a keen interest in the nuances of feminine anxiety, going deeper and with greater understanding and sympathy than most male filmmakers, and Jean-Baptiste's growing terror at the apparently cursed dressed she purchased is palpable. But his keen eye captures a particularly British strain of toxic masculinity in the second half as a clueless but determined washing machine repairman (a committed Leo Bill) is caught in the dress' machinations. The weirdness piles on, emanating from both the dress and from the world without, and the movie becomes exhilaratingly strange without ever alienating our sympathies for its doomed characters. It's a gorgeous labyrinth, like a Quentin Dupieux movie that doesn't despise its audience, its high weirdness sticking in the mind thanks to the lusciousness of its design.
