Phantom Thread

Perhaps the most bizarre romantic comedy ever made.

Some movies are so atmospheric that they transport us to a fully realized world. They provide a sensuous experience, not only because they anchor us with a strong sense of time and place, but because their emotional texture is of a piece with the world they create. Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, or Pablo Larrain’s Jackie are good examples. Even though they are tonally different, in them, milieu and feeling are totally intertwined. These are the only kinds of films that I feel compelled, almost beyond reason, to watch again. They are fetishistic in the best possible way.

This is the case with Phantom Thread, written and directed by P.T. Anderson. The almost monastic, if not downright funereal world that couturier Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day Lewis) inhabits is deliciously claustrophobic. In clinical white surroundings, Woodcock creates couture gowns in jewel tones, hand-sewn by a platoon of silent seamstresses. The House of Woodcock is like a mausoleum. Reynolds is exacting and impossible, but he is also a sensitive. He sews little secret thoughts into the folds of his creations. He is like a marvelous, difficult child. The atmosphere is wonderfully cold and hushed. The score by Jonny Greenwood provides a lush, romantic counterpoint to the icy silence.