Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Vicky Krieps | ... | ||
Daniel Day-Lewis | ... | ||
Lesley Manville | ... | ||
|
Sue Clark | ... |
Biddy
|
|
Joan Brown | ... |
Nana
|
|
Harriet Leitch | ... |
Pippa
|
|
Dinah Nicholson | ... |
Elsa
|
|
Julie Duck | ... |
Irma
|
|
Maryanne Frost | ... |
Winn
|
|
Elli Banks | ... |
Elli
|
|
Amy Cunningham | ... |
Mabel
|
|
Amber Brabant | ... |
Amber
|
|
Geneva Corlett | ... |
Geneva
|
|
Juliet Glaves | ... |
Florist
|
Camilla Rutherford | ... |
Johanna
|
Set in the glamour of 1950's post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock's life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love. Written by Focus Features
A couple of months ago, a friend was saying "I'm not saying you should see MOTHER! but you're a yahoo if you don't"; when I saw it, I found it a self-indulgent artistic polemic against self-indulgent artistic polemics.
This movie, in contrast, is a lampoon of those 1930s and 1940s movies in which someone suffers endlessly for some selfish artistic a**hole, dying of Dread Movie Disease in the 7th reel and looking more beautiful than ever, while the artist conducts his symphony or receives the applause at the premiere of his play; the protagonist is unnoticed save for the Vitaphone Orchestra and perhaps the Hall Johnson choir.
Then, just as it is getting a little too long and self-indulgent, the movie switches gears. And does it again. All in that beautiful Technicolor lighting you got in Great Britain on prints that were a bit too dark.... thanks to uncredited cinematographer Paul Thomas Anderson.
There's no reason this should be to your taste; large sections of it, about Vicky Krieps suffering because she loves Day-Lewis so much, and he, despite his occasional heterosexual activity (about like Donald Westlake's Parker) cares for nothing but making beautiful dresses and the memory of his dead mother, were not to mine. Still, by the end, when it's all creepy, I was left wondering whether this might actually be a comedy. It's certainly a commentary on obsessive artists, and a lot more subtly and artistically rendered than Aronofsky managed.