FIlm Review: Phantom Thread

Fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) has everything he wants. Living in luxury – the reward for his obsessive labour – he creates gowns with the flair and fervour of an artist. He signs his work by sewing secret messages into the hems, wanting complete control over every beautiful thing he creates.

That desire also applies to women. A serial womaniser who discards one conquest – pardon, “muse” – after another, his attentions eventually fall upon Alma, a waitress with innocent eyes and an appetite for life. As they court, one is reminded of Day-Lewis’ turn in The Age Of Innocence, where his genteel, gentlemanly charm shone through. Like that film, there’s a desperate energy lurking underneath his flirtations – but in Phantom Thread, this energy is much more sinister, as Reynolds’ adoration for Alma echoes his work: designing and creating an image of feminine perfection.

Anderson, who also shot the film, stages it as an exquisite tableau of wealth porn; the sensual gaze upon food and fabrics evoking similarly materially-concerned films like I Am Love. The texture, the richness and the malleability of the objects Anderson salivatingly lingers upon contrast with Reynolds himself. Hard, cold and unmoving, he is a selfish brute who wants to own Anna like he does his beautiful ornaments.

The film takes on the air of a suspenseful psychological showdown: will Reynolds break Alma or will she undo him? In the last role of his career, Day-Lewis is volcanic perfection, his stillness unnerving, his potential terrifying – just like the film. Intellectual and controlled, this gothic fable of ego is fascinating but remains emotionally remote, never offering intimacy. Anderson slowly fills Reynolds and Alma’s lives with an inescapable toxicity. Indeed, you expect the flowers and food to collapse into rotted black.