4/16/2023 0 Comments Phantom thread bijou san antonio![]() ![]() Anderson tracks the courtship of Reynolds and Alma as a delicate, push-pull affair, each partner severely reactive to the other’s acts of charity or cruelty. Phantom Thread isn’t as outwardly harsh as any of these films: ultimately a romantic comedy of a particularly perverse persuasion, it glides and whispers, folding its most disturbing psychological ideas into a strangely tender spirit of seduction. There Will Be Blood’s ruthless, loveless oil prospector Daniel Plainview craved possession of land and human souls in roughly equal measure The Master gave us two spiritually poisoned men, each shaped and gnarled by dysfunctional relations with women, whose power struggle built into a crippled romance of egos. ![]() Magnolia tackled it head-on via Tom Cruise’s performance as male-empowerment motivational speaker Frank TJ Mackey, a misogynist with a brittle alpha veneer and braying mantra of “respect the cock”. Ravenous, even destructively toxic masculinity is hardly a new theme in Anderson’s oeuvre. Throughout Phantom Thread, at the basest metaphorical level, man hungers and woman feeds where the power lies in this dynamic is often hard to determine, though it’s hard to describe how it shifts without giving away the film’s exquisitely twisted secrets. Her note is not the last time the matter of his appetite will be brought up between them, though it won’t always be over breakfast, or over food at all. The waitress is Alma (Vicky Krieps), a soft-spoken Belgian immigrant with hidden steel in her nerves. It’s a task Reynolds appears to have been repeating ever since – making dresses fit for his mother, waiting for someone to fill them and to take her place.The hungry boy is Reynolds Woodcock, a high-end couturier played by Daniel Day-Lewis with a perma-arch, stately air worthy of that splendid name. She taught him his trade and, aged just 16, he created a wedding dress for her. But it could also invoke the lock of his mother’s hair that Reynolds has sewn into the canvas of his coat, keeping her always close to his heart. It’s also very funny, thanks in no small part to Manville’s withering delivery of zingers such as: “I don’t want to hear it because it hurts my ears.” If Reynolds is the eyes and mouth of this house, Cyril is its nose, sniffing Alma like fresh prey, smelling “sandalwood and rosewater, sherry and lemon juice” as she sizes up the new arrival.Īs for the phantom thread of the title, the phrase apparently refers to the ghostly yarn that would haunt Victorian seamstresses, their exhausted fingers compulsively repeating sewing motions long after their work was done. And make no mistake, this is a ghost story too, replete with fevered apparitions of the departed returning to possess the living. A scene of Reynolds appreciating a hearty breakfast recalls Michael Hordern in Whistle and I’ll Come to You, Jonathan Miller’s 1968 adaptation of MR James’s classic ghost story. Moreover, he’s hungry like the wolf (Alma calls him her “hungry boy”), displaying a voracious appetite when aroused. With his insect-like limbs and ghoulishly handsome face, he has more than a touch of the vampire about him, a quality enhanced by a trembling vocal inflection that is part cloistered-Brit, part timeless-Transylvanian. Through this kingdom prowls Reynolds, as predatory as he is pernickety. Leading his own collaborative camera team (no director of photography is credited), the writer-director waltzes us through the doors, corridors and staircases of this strange land – from ivory towers to woodland retreats, where magic mushrooms lurk in the undergrowth, tempting and tasty. Tipping his hat in equal measure toward Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger and the Brothers Grimm, Anderson swaps the heady, Stateside fug of Inherent Vice for a sharp Euro-vision as clear and pristine as alpine snow. Reynolds’s sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), tends to his peculiarly picky needs – running the family business, facilitating his creative rituals and politely dismissing the disposable muses who have outstayed their welcome. ![]() A swooning score, crisp visuals and paper-cut-sharp performances combine to conjure a poisoned rose of a movie, inviting you to prick your finger on its thorns and succumb to its weird, dark magic.ĭaniel Day-Lewis, in what the actor has claimed is his final performance, plays fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock, an artist with an obsessive streak, in the mould of Anton Walbrook’s Lermontov from The Red Shoes. Set in postwar London, amid the insular world of 50s haute couture, Phantom Thread is an oedipal gothic romance, a tale of lost mothers and broken spells, with secret messages (“never cursed”) sewn into its gorgeously cinematic cloth. P aul Thomas Anderson’s best film since Punch-Drunk Love is another cracked romance with a masochistic streak and a strong fairytale underpinning. ![]()
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