“Phantom Thread” has a Phantom Plot.

Anderson and his cast aren’t just messing with each other, they’re messing with you.

I liked “Phantom Thread”.

Most people won’t. The action, such as it is, takes place within the characters, and their arcs, such as they are, end in even stranger places than they start.

Daniel Day-Lewis (in what he claims will be his last role) plays Reynolds, a buttoned up London haute couturist — a dressmaker to the stars. Lesley Manville (in what you may hope will be her last role) plays Cyril, his even more buttoned up sister. Relative newcomer, Vicky Krieps, in what seems at first a breath of normalcy, plays Alma, the ingenue.

On it’s surface this is a tailory twist on Pygmalion, but all is not what it seems. Deeper down, it’s less Pygmalion than it is Shutter Island, and both Reynolds and Alma are less lovers than they are Teddy Daniels/Andrew Laeddis, sick folks in search of themselves and others with whom to share their sicknesses.

Though the real plot is subsurface, the superficial plot has a chronology:

Thirteen minutes in rich boy meets poor working girl.

Fourteen minutes in he does something rather odd. Fifteen minutes in she does something equally odd.

By sixteen minutes in we’re sure there’s something more going on here than just boy meets girl, one of them is a serial killer, but we don’t know which it is.

But they don’t kill each other, or anyone else. The ambitions of their plots aren’t apparent to the world, nor does it seem, are they completely apparent to the plotters themselves.

Thirty-five minutes in he cuts her to the bone with purposely harsh words. Thirty-six minutes in they have sex, and thirty-seven minutes in she irritates him so much he walks out.

Not out of her life, just out of the room. Leaving a completely unsympathetic Cyril to explain it’s nothing, really, just Reynolds marking out his territory. He’s a suffering artist. Alma will suffer him, or not. It’s up to her, because he won’t change, he will not want to change.

Sixty minutes in Cyril smiles such an unnatural smile Alma pauses, and must have wondered…what scheme is afoot here? But we know Cyril better; it’s a real smile, her first— in a lifetime of frowns — she’s simply not good at it.

Seventy minutes in — seventy minutes on the nose, the plot, the real plot, is revealed. She’s not the only one who’ll suffer. All that’s left for us to know is how far she’ll go and how far he’ll suffer her to go.

And by the end we know.

There are no mysteries, and the fact that we keep looking for them makes the film doubly Hitchcockian.

Day-Lewis and Krieps are each other’s McGuffins, apparent objects of desire, which are in fact, just symbolic excuses which allow them to act on their real desires. The love story between these two odd ducks is our McGuffin, which is in fact, the symbolic excuse which allows us to watch an even stranger story.

This isn’t Paul Thomas Anderson’s first story about isolated, outwardly intense and inwardly odd people. He gave us “Boogie Nights” and in 2007 he and Day-Lewis conspired together on “There Will Be Blood”, for which Anderson received two Oscar nominations but no trophies, and Day-Lewis received a nomination and a statue. He has three.

Anderson doesn’t make many films. If you like Paul Thomas Anderson — this is a must see.

If you’re a Daniel Day-Lewis fan — this is a must see. He’s likely to win his fourth Oscar, if not for the intensely formed character, for the fact that he says it will be his last role, and the cadre of actors in the Academy will want to send him away a winner to, if nothing else, be rid of the competition.

If you’re a Lesley Manville fan — this is a must see. She’s up for an Oscar for playing the coldest fish in the coldest, darkest, deepest sea, and she’ll have to go far to beat what she did with this role.

Or — if you live as, live with, or are taken with those who are emotional cripples, this is a must see.

Otherwise — maybe not.

I can’t help thinking the mostly female audience at my showing came intending to see a film about a handsome tailor in control of the fashion world, and were uncomfortably shocked when they found themselves watching a film about the repressed and repressing, the depressed and depressing, those in pain and those who inflict that pain—

— who also just happen to sew.