**Very strange, very stylish, very funny, but not for everyone**
> Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.
- Ernest Becker; The Denial of Death (1973)
> In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should enjoy unprecedented savings on all their favourite brands. This was the first Black Friday and took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to find their discounts. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he had his eye on a new laptop. He went to be registered at Target with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in the latest styles from Old Navy, and laid him in a shopping cart, because they were waiting in line to get into Walmart.
- Adam Kotsko; "The story of the first Black Friday" (2014)
One of the most visually and aurally accomplished filmmakers currently working, writer/director Peter Strickland has thus far enjoyed considerable critical acclaim and some limited arthouse and festival success, but has been unable to make much of a mainstream impact. Not that he seems remotely bothered by this, as his latest, In Fabric, is easily the most impenetrable and singular work in his increasingly impressive oeuvre. On paper, it's all very straightforward – an unsuspecting customer buys a dress that seems to be haunted (or may actually be inherently evil), and it unleashes chaos in her life. But as anyone who has seen any of Strickland's previous films knows, bare plot outlines do little to convey the riches therein – sure, Katalin Varga (2009) is a rape/revenge thriller, Berberian Sound Studio (2012) is a giallo love-letter, and The Duke of Burgundy (2014) is an S&M-themed lesbian romance, but each one goes to some truly unexpected places not in any way suggested by their ostensible subject matter. With In Fabric, although it definitely flirts with embracing the transformative power of fine clothing and the positive psychological effects one can experience by wearing something one believes to look fantastic, Strickland is far more interested in roundly mocking some of the more crass elements of consumerism, particularly the pernicious and seemingly irresistible lure of "the bargain", and the herd mentality manufactured, maintained, and exploited by retail corporations during Black Friday (an event that if witnessed by aliens would surely lead to them judging us too intellectually rudimentary to bother conquering). In Fabric's biggest single problem is that it's actually made up of two loosely-connected storylines, but because the first one is so much more interesting, it leads to some narrative slackness in the second half, and all in all, it's not a patch on his best work to date, The Duke of Burgundy. Nevertheless, it's brilliantly acted, looks (and sounds) amazing, has an unparalleled commitment to the more tactile elements of the medium, is exceptionally funny, and will never allow you look at a washing machine (or a washing machine repairman) in quite the same way again.
Set in a London suburb at an unspecified point in time (although obviously meant to be during the 1980s), the film tells the story of bank teller Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, playing the role as if she's in a piece of 1960s social realist cinema). A recently-divorced mother to a teenage son, Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), whose older girlfriend Gwen (an unrecognisable Gwendoline Christie having an absolute blast) seems to have moved in without asking, Sheila's life is in a rut (the most excitement she has is watching Vince and Gwen having sex through a keyhole...don't ask). Having recently placed a lonely-hearts ad in the paper, she has an upcoming date, and is determined to make a good first impression, and so visits a Dentley & Soper department store looking to buy something nice in the January sales. Apparently run by a coven of witches who don't even bother trying to conceal their true identities, Sheila is all but accosted by Eastern European sales assistant Miss Luckmoore (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed, who gleefully plays the role like she's in a Halloween special of The Simpsons, and who describes the store as "a panoply of temptation"). Talked into buying a beautiful "artery red" dress, it doesn't take long for Sheila to realise that something is not entirely kosher about the garment - from prompting dog attacks to trashing her washing machine to floating above her bed to having strange phrases sown into the lining ("you who wear me will know me") to featuring prominently in particularly nasty dreams, clearly the dress is as nefarious as a Dublin-made shell suit (although it looks slightly less ridiculous), and has nothing but bad intentions for poor Sheila. And to make matters worse, the date is a bust. Meanwhile, the wedding of washing machine repairman Reg (Leo Bill) and his fiancée Babs (Hayley Squires) is fast approaching; Sheila's micromanaging bosses, Stash and Clive (a hilarious Julian Barratt and Steve Oram, respectively), have some concerns over her method of shaking hands; Luckmoore and her boss, Lundy (Richard Bremmer), spend their free time doing something questionable to a mannequin; and a game of Ludo between Sheila, Vince, and Gwen redefines the term passive-aggressive.
Apparently inspired by Strickland's childhood memories of being taken to the January sales by his mother, he claims that they made such an indelible impression on his psyche that to this day, he experiences autonomous sensory meridian response whenever he encounters anything related to sales. Irrespective of this, In Fabric is undeniably a consumerist satire, not entirely divorced from something like George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). The malignant control that capitalism exerts on the masses, the commodification of desire, the exploitation and manipulation of notions of self-worth, the vulgarity of a materialism serving as its own end - all are interwoven into the film's style, sensuality, and texture, much as the themes of his first three films are indistinguishable from their aesthetic design. Just look at how Strickland uses TV commercials advertising the sales; in a film partly about the impulses that drive us to purchase, these clips are the first (and certainly not the last) indication that consumerism is effectively a form of mass hypnosis. Strickland has a real talent for making theme elevate style into something more meaningful, and In Fabric provides more evidence of that, with the highly-stylised aesthetic commenting on the ultimate emptiness of retail therapy, even as it seems to offer short-term happiness. Leaning into the artificiality of the film's milieu, Strickland makes no attempt to construct a believable, lived-in world, asking not only how do the customers of Dentley & Soper not realise something is wrong, but so too querying whether our own real-world behaviour is any different, when we see that item we've been craving turn up in a sale.
With that in mind, although this is not an especially realistic film, it is an absolutely gorgeous film, one that gleefully embraces gaudy 70s kitsch from literally its opening frames (a perfectly manicured hand violently opening a box, followed by the most 70s title sequence you'll see all year). Reproducing the hyper-stylised look of classic giallos, the most obvious touchstone is Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977), with Strickland and his young Australian director of photography Ari Wegner (The Kettering Incident; Lady Macbeth; Stray) bathing the film in a lurid colour palette of over-the-top reds, purples, and greens. The other-worldly vibe is helped immensely by Cavern of Anti-Matter's synth score full of harsh electronic screams and repetitive droning, and the queasy, disorientating sound design by Martin Pavey, executive producer Ben Wheatley's regular sound designer. Filling the soundtrack with non-diegetic whispering and incantations, the aural design keeps the viewer constantly on edge, as if the evil in the dress has somehow infected the magnetic track. Indeed, the sound design is just as important here as it was in Berberian Sound Studio, a film which was literally about sound design - just listen to the sounds of the bargain-hunting crowds in Dentley & Soper, with the incoherent mumbling of their stampede into the store turned into a chaotic, animal-like din.
One of the film's most successful elements, and one of the reasons it's so funny, is how ultra-seriously everyone takes the whole thing. Jean-Baptiste, Bill, and Squires (the three ostensible leads) all play their parts as if they're in a Ken Loach film (which all three have been in the past), whilst Strickland, for his part, approaches the whole endeavour with a similar reverence - there's no winking at the audience here, and it's the absence of such winking that makes it all so funny. From Stash and Clive explaining the correct etiquette when meeting the mistress of one's boss to the sexual power that Reg has over women once he starts explaining the inner workings of a washing machine, the film's humour is rooted firmly in the fact that no one involved acts like they're in a comedy, and it's this self-seriousness which is so disarmingly and consistently funny (just look at the Ludo game from hell or the scene where Stash and Clive discuss the difference between "looking for staff" and "trying to find staff"). The scenes of the dress crawling around Sheila's house are especially funny partly because they look so ridiculous (you can all but see the wires leading off-camera), but mainly because Strickland treats them with complete sincerity, as if he's not actually in on the joke (which he most certainly is). A film about an evil dress shouldn't work on any level except parody, yet it's precisely because the film doesn't seem parodic that it works so well, and that's a testament to his immense control of tone. This is particularly true of the batshit insane proclamations uttered by Luckmoore ("the hesitation in your voice soon to be an echo in the recesses of the spheres of retail"; "our perspectives on the specters of mortality must not be confused by an askew index of commerce"; "dimensions and proportions transcend the prisms of our measurements"; "did the transaction validate your paradigm of consumerism?"). This is pure verbal diarrhoea, and can only be in any way effective if it's roundly mocked. And yet, it's the utter dearth of mockery that renders each statement so hilarious.
In terms of problems, by the very nature of what he's trying to accomplish, Strickland is somewhat guilty of allowing the film's sensual elements to overwhelm the characters. Certainly, the film burrows under your skin and lodges there, and Strickland has absolute mastery of the difficult-to-control tactile components of the medium, but aside from Luckmoore, none of the characters really linger in the mind, despite the superb cast. None are especially interesting as people, and when the film focuses on them rather than the inherent strangeness at its core, it slackens quite a bit. From an emotional point of view, there isn't a huge amount of empathy or pathos, and had Strickland focused on just the one storyline, the whole might have worked slightly better. Or perhaps he should have gone in the other direction entirely, making it a kind of ensemble piece, with five or six different storylines, watching the dress affect different people in different ways. Also in relation to this, because the Sheila plot is so much more interesting that the Reg plot, the film seems front-loaded, which is never good. And although it didn't bother me, some people will really dislike the amount of loose ends, unexplained background elements, and narrative dead ends, especially in the bonkers last act.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed In Fabric. Yet more evidence that Strickland is a master stylist (in the best sense of the term), the craft behind the film is simply beyond reproach. Feeling for all the world like a rediscovered giallo, lost for the last four decades and restored to its original glory (complete with very questionable dubbing), it's cryptic and impenetrable, but so too is it hilarious and a feast for the senses. No one makes films quite like Strickland, where the existential and esoteric rub shoulders with the tactile and the sensual, where the textures of the milieu leap off the screen right alongside the themes. Hypnotic, seductive, immensely enjoyable, In Fabric is quite unlike anything you'll see all year.
