Never
before has a stone-cold vengeance-taker been so passive and mild mannered. We
really ought to fix up this supposedly scandalous seamstress with Adam Sandler’s
Cobbler, so they could go be cloying together. However, the well of quirkiness
will eventually run dry in the tonal train wreck that is Jocelyn Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker (trailer here), which opens today
in New York.
To
paraphrase the tag-line of The Hateful
Eight, nobody leaves Paris for the outback backwater of Dungatar without a
damn good reason. Of course, that reason would be revenge. The town done Tilly “Don’t
Call Me Myrtle” Dunnage wrong when they wrongfully blamed her for the death of
entitled bully Stewart Pettyman and sent her away to boarding schools (looks to
us like they did her a favor, but whatever). Dunnage still holds a grudge for
the physical and emotional abuse she and her vinegary-tongued old mum Molly
endured, but she gets sidetracked from her pay-back mission when her original
couture designs prove popular with the women in town.
In
between fittings and measurements, Dunnage will try to uncover the truth of
what happened to Pettyman (surnames are truly destiny in The Dressmaker) that fateful day. Of course, it is blindingly
obvious to viewers what went down, but I can’t blame Dunnage for suppressing
her memories. I had to go to hypnosis therapy to recover my repressed memory of
this film.
Lest
you think Dressmaker is all about
empowerment through frocks and sashes, be warned. The film takes a ridiculously
dark turn down the stretch. Frankly, it is almost worth recommending Dressmaker just to watch it go
perversely out of its way to alienate its core audience. However, you still
have to sit through the nauseatingly saccharine first two acts to get there.
Honest
to Betsy, Moorhouse and co-screenwriter P.J. Hogan throw in just about every awkwardly
dated cliché you could think of adapting Rosalie Ham’s novel. There is the
senile-like-a-fox mother, the cross-dressing town constable oohing and awing over
Dunnage’s latest fabric swatches, and the hunky shirtless neighbor looking out
for his developmentally disabled brother (and maybe Dunnage too, if she will
let him). Dressmaker would have been derivative
in the early 1990s. In 2016, it is such an off-key spectacle of shtick, Meryl
Streep will probably get nominated for it, even though she isn’t even in the
picture.
Kate
Winslet’s judgment is usually rather sound, so it is surprising to find her in
this chick flick from Hell. It is even more disappointing to see Hugo Weaving
recycling such dated stereotypes as the fashion-conscious Sergeant Farrat. You
were Agent Smith in the Matrix trilogy,
try to show some dignity, for crying out loud.
