No director pays beautiful homage to giallo films like Peter Strickland. Since I first saw his masterpiece, The Duke of Burgundy, I have been obsessed with his films. Strickland sets his stories in vague locations and times. For example, The Duke of Burgundy appears to take place somewhere in Europe, sometime in the late 1960s...however, the world it occupies has no men and no children. As in, men and children don't exist. In building such a world, the Strickland jolts us from our comfort zone and gives us no cultural markers on which to rely. The Duke of Burgundy focuses on two women in a Dominant/submissive relationship...but can we call them lesbians if men don't exist? Can we call it a Dom/sub relationship if, as it appears in the film, all the people in this movie are in such relationships?
Strickland's latest horror/comedy, In Fabric, is just as timeless but even stranger than The Duke of Burgundy. The movie is about killer dress that seems to do the bidding of a coven of witches who live in the basement of a department store. So right off the bat, I'm like: 1) weird and 2) wow, this reminds me a LOT of the OG giallo film, Suspiria. The cinematography and music pay direct homage to Dario Argento's classic horror tale of a ballet school run by witches.
Shelia Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, giving the film a much-needed straight man to react to all this weirdness) is divorced, in her 50s, living with her ungrateful son, Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), and his hyper-sexual girlfriend, Gwen (Gwendoline Christie...yes, Brienne of Tarth). She is lonely and frustrated. She puts a personal ad in the newspaper and, when she has a date on the books, goes to Dentley & Soper's department store to find a new dress. And find one she does: in "artery red", the dress is a size smaller than Shelia's measurements, yet fits perfectly (Sisterhood of the Traveling Killer Dress?). Never mind the fact that it gives Sheila a nasty rash right away.
Meanwhile, the ladies who work at the department store wash an anatomically correct mannequin in the basement while some old dude looks on and masturbates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Other weird shit happens: the dress makes Sheila's washing machine "go bananas". A dog attacks the dress and rips it, but then later that evening...the dress is no longer ripped (!!!). The dress watches Gwen and Vince have kinky sex and then attacks Gwen. The dress slinks down a staircase. If this all sounds ridiculous, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Eventually, the dress makes its way to a new owner: Reg Speaks (Leo Bill), a chinless washing-machine repair man who is having a stag party to celebrate his upcoming nuptials to Babs (Haley Squires). His friends force him to put on the dress as part of the fun and games of stag night. Later, Babs finds the dress and puts it on. It fits both her and Reg perfectly, despite different body types. And they both come to tragic ends.
In Fabric is...to put it mildly...not for everyone. It's weird even by my standards and I like weird movies. It is dreamlike and artsy and sexual, but not in a sexy way. There is a lot of shit that goes unexplained--like, who are the women in the basement of the department store? Who is the man who jacks off to a mannequin? Why a killer dress? Is this all a metaphor for capitalism run amok? Who knows! When I say In Fabric is dreamlike, I literally mean that it is very much like being in a dream: there are familiar objects, places, and events, but they are all a little off. For example, Sheila works at a bank (very normal) where she is chastised by her bosses for not having a "meaningful" enough handshake (wut). Sheila's son, Vince, has the hairdo and clothes of a young man living in 2019, but everything else in Sheila's part of the film looks like the late 1970s. Everything is familiar yet confoundingly strange--just like a dream. The timeline doesn't make sense either--just like a dream. And symbolism, color, and sound are more important than plot--just like in a dream.
So, I recommend this movie to cinephiles, especially those who like Peter Strickland. Most other viewers may find themselves out of their depth. Unlike the killer dress itself, this movie won't fit everyone.
Grade: B+
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