Phantom Thread (2017, R)

Here’s the next best picture nominee.  While it’s certainly beautifully-made and features some excellent performances, I don’t know that I’d quite rate it that high.  Personally, when it comes to best picture, I probably would have given its slot to something else. 

Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dress designer in 1950s London, both brilliant and temperamental.  He meets Alma, his latest muse, working in a café, and the two begin a complicated, often tempestuous relationship that’s at least as much about Reynolds’s work as it is about the attraction/affection between them.  To borrow a line from The Last Five Years, Alma isn’t sure she’s content with merely “trotting along at the genius’s heels,” and she wrestles with what to do about their relationship.

In some ways, the dynamic between Reynolds and Alma reminds me of George and Dot from Sunday in the Park with George (evidently, I’m getting really musical-theatre-y with this review,) with her unsure where and how much the lines between muse and lover blur.  I like that aspect of Alma’s story – and more than anything else, the film is Alma’s story – the struggle between her feelings for Reynolds and her need for more than the role he assigns her.  I also like the more personal side of Reynolds’s love of dresses, especially the stories of sewing/designing from his youth that he tells Alma about, and the slightly chilly but very entangled relationship he has with his sister interests me.

All that said, I find this to be another good-but-not-great film.  It’s really slow (I was amazed to check my watch and realize it was only about half over,) and in the end, it doesn’t say too much we haven’t already heard about difficult artistic geniuses.  It’s not a movie I expect to stick with me for a long time.

Still, it is a beautiful film to take in, even if the story doesn’t entirely hold my attention.  The costumes are predictably gorgeous (pretty easy bet that it’ll win there,) and the production design on the whole is really well done.  Daniel Day-Lewis is of course great as Reynolds, particular and introspective and exacting.  I also really like Vicky Krieps, who I wasn’t familiar with, as Alma, a young woman navigating how she fits into this couture artist’s world.  In addition to Lewis’s lead actor nod, Lesley Manville, who plays Reynolds’s sister Cyril, is up for best supporting actress.  I’ll admit that surprises me a little – while Manville is very good, there isn’t much about the character/performance that particularly stands out to me.

Warnings

Language, drinking/smoking, sexual references, and thematic elements.