Monday 22 July 2019

NZIFF Film Review: "In Fabric" (2018).


From the director of The Duke of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio comes In Fabric. This British horror comedy film written and directed by Peter Strickland. The film is a haunting ghost story set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a department store and follows the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences.

By September 2017, the film was announced with Strickland directing from a screenplay he wrote with Marianne Jean-Baptiste to star. Blue Bear Rook Films, Bankside Films, BBC Films and British Film Institute would finance and produce. By late October, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, Gwendoline Christie, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Barry Adamson, Jaygann Ayeh, Richard Bremmer, Fatma Mohamed, and Sidse Babett Knudsen rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in late November. Filming took place in London and Kent, England.

The film stars Jean-Baptiste, Squires, Bill, Christie, Barratt, Oram, Adamson, Ayeh, Bremmer, Mohamed, and Knudsen. I have never encountered anything quite so auditorily menacing. I promise you have never seen, or heard, anything like it, and the cast's performance, especially that of Jean-Baptiste, are fantastically gripping.

In Fabric is a stand-out film that is seriously weird and seriously good. Its reach may exceed its grasp, but with In Fabric, director Peter Strickland assembles a suitably twisted, creepy tribute to British horror cinema, especially that of Hammer Horror movies of the '70s that benefits from a strong central performance by Marianne Jean-Baptise. While it's a loving homage to movies like Terence Fisher and is crafted with tons of style, it leaves out one key ingredient: being even remotely scary. A sometimes interesting, sometimes head-scratching movie that pays homage to the old ways of the sound mixing world and to the Hammer Horror films that was less prominent in British during the 1970s. If you're open to films that fearlessly twist the conventions, and that mine the language of sound and image for their own strange potential, you'll get a kick from this rivetingly inventive, abrasively un-British piece of nightmare cinema. People meet horrific ends at the hands of a cursed dress in this chiller, a down-the-earhole psychodrama where what you hear is more terrifying than what you see. It not only exploits one of cinema's most important modes, it also attempts something more difficult: turning a genre movie into a work of art. The film is definitely unique with some wonderful moments that nail what Strickland is going for, but it's too uneven to be something truly great. Strangely accessible for a ghost story art-house film; a pleasure from beginning to end, with lavish attention to detail. This is a real cinephile's delight - with Strickland almost gorging on the four cinematic elements of sound (quite literally), cinematography, editing and mise en scène. You have to hand it to the film for originality. Strickland has created a sublime piece of cinema that is intelligent, comic and one of the most profoundly disturbing films to be seen in recent years.

Simon says In Fabric receives:



Also, see my NZIFF review for Andrei Rublev (Андрей Рублёв).

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