In
retrospect, Sheila Woodchapel should have just gone to Harrod’s, even though it
might have been more expensive. There is a reason the king of all department
stores still endures. Instead, she went to Dentley & Soper’s, lured by the
promise of modern elegance at sale prices. The dress she buys turns out to be
truly a killer in Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, which opens this Friday
in New York.
Woodchapel
is recently divorced and probably taking it even worse than her peevish millennial
son Vince (is there any other kind of Millennial?). With considerable
trepidation, she starts dating men through the newspaper classifieds (it is
hard to pinpoint the exact time period, but a retro 1960s vibe deliberately
permeates Fabric). Of course, she will need a new dress.
At
Dentley & Soper’s, Woodchapel is tended to by the strange Cruella de
Vil-esque Miss Luckmoore, who convinces her to take a fashionable red number
that shouldn’t fit her, but somehow does. The new threads look fab on her, but ugly
rashes breakout across her skin after she wears it for her first date. The
sinister dress also seems to cause dangerous accidents around her flat. Soon,
the red garment will have a similar effect on others.
The
premise of Fabric sounds ludicrous, but in Strickland’s hands, it
becomes an ultra-chic descent into madness. There is no question he is one of
the most distinctive stylists creating genre cinema today. Arguably, Fabric is
even more eye-popping than Berberian Sound Studio, but his earlier Gialo
homage was a more disorienting head-spinner.
Regardless,
the visual compositions and juxtapositions in Fabric are darkly
dazzling. It is also cool to see Marianne Jean-Baptiste, the character thesp
recognizable from Without a Trace and several hundred other film and TV
credits, get to step out as the lead (more or less). She is terrific as
Woodchapel, making us care (despite her human failings) and fear for the worst.
She also has some unexpectedly realistic and appealing chemistry with Barry Adamson
(former member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), as her more agreeable personals
date.
Horror
fans will also be relieved to hear Fatma Mohamed’s Miss Luckmoore is just weird
as heck. Richard Bremmer is nearly as creepy playing Mr. Lundy, the store
manager. However, the evilest characters just might be Stash and Clive, Woodchapel’s
wickedly funny and thoroughly contemptible bosses, played by the relentlessly
scenery-chewing Julian Barratt ND Steve Oram.
Color,
lighting, and mood are all critically important to Fabric, so it is
impossible to overstate the contributions of Ari Wegner’s uber-stylish
cinematography. This could very well be the best-looking film of the year.
There is probably supposed to be some kind of simplistic critique of
consumerist culture in there, but fortunately it is totally overwhelmed by the hallucinatory
viewing experience. Very highly recommended, In Fabric opens this Friday
(12/6) in New York, at the Metrograph.
