Dressmaker obtuse peculiar

Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker. Image courtesy Broad Green Pictures.

The first word that came to mind to describe The Dressmaker after watching it is bizarre. But it's not a good bizarre like the works of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, who make movies that force audiences to interpret what they're watching with minimal input from the respective director. No, this is bad bizarre, strange for the sake of being strange with little no idea of what it wants to accomplish at the end of its final reel. The only thing The Dressmaker will think about it how poorly constructed the clunky flick you just watched is.

The Dressmaker is several films in one, it's opening sequence shoving things toward a soap opera and melodramatic direction. It could've made for a fascinating engagement to watch Kate Winslet (as the eponymous sartorial creator) and Hugo Weaving vamp things up for 90 minutes with terrific fashion ensembles in the middle of nowhere Australia. (It’s worked before for Weaving.) Then the film moves forward and the story goes into so many directions at once the question arises as to what, exactly, the film is trying to do. Is it a revenge tale featuring a black sheep returning home for a little vengeance so many years later? Is it a noir with Winslet as the femme fatale? Is it a study of the dangers of memory, how forgetting is sometimes for the best? Is it a mismatched romance between Winslet and Liam Hemsworth as the wokest Aussie in 1952? Is the film trying to show how difficult it can be for mothers (in this case Judy Davis) and daughters to reunite? Is this a film like Chocolat or Needful Things in which an outsider causes ruffles in the small community? Is it a profile of the evils hidden within a small community? Is it a comedy, a drama, a dramedy or a coma? Somehow, the answer is yes, which is a problem for a film trying to tell something resembling a linear plot and eschewing dreaminess or the fantastical. So many elements exist the filmmakers simply have no time to delve into any of them with some sense of completion or satisfaction. It creates an atonal experience by combining so much of everything the viewer is left with nothing to latch onto.

The film has this sort of attitude of tossing as much stuff into it as possible that, perhaps, something might land somewhere near successful. Admittedly, the ensembles designed by Winslet's character are quite lovely, and Weaving plays things so campy it becomes somewhat charming to watch him revel at Winslet's sartorial creations. No one else follows his lead, aside from a few slips by Winslet into behaving in a somewhat scandalous fashion, so The Dressmaker comes across as more straight faced than it ought to be. It's strange how this film both rejects and embraces its oddness, pushing away from being too strange yet replacing character development with quirks. It tries too hard to be odd when it does go in that direction, becoming a subpar Twin Peaks and failing to provide that show’s sense of community intrigue.

At least Twin Peaks has some grounding and logic for its esoteric leanings. The Dressmaker doesn’t have that same grounding, lacking true motivation for its plot machinations besides an illogical revenge plot. The film has so many malarkey plot twists designed to forcibly advance Winslet's character into something resembling independence the whole endeavor could easily break a viewer’s mind trying to put the events into some form of logical flow. The initial prompt for the event is a lost memory from Winslet’s past, and the film resolves it in a fittingly messy fashion, only to continue beyond any point of interest through a bombastic ending that loses any sense of logic within a few moments of thought.

Thought, really, is anathema to The Dressmaker. Thought provides an undercurrent of logic to an obtusely illogical situation designed by filmmakers to be appear difficult and challenging. Films like this fail because they try to appear smart and lose that sheen once people can start parsing through what they witnessed. The Dressmaker requires more direction than it currently has, some underlying point to make Winslet’s return home emotionally affecting or at least designed to be more than a series of flukes. Otherwise all that’s left is watching Hugo Weaving go mad over Dior, which isn’t a bad thing but not something that can carry a two-hour movie.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer

Rating: R

Run time: 118 minute

Genre: Drama

 

Ask Away

Target audience: People down for obscure Aussie flicks.

Take the whole family?: Stick with the rating recommendation on this one; it gets a bit bloody and very uncomfortable.

Theater or Netflix?: Stay home if you must watch it.

Academy Award chances?: Hopefully about zero for the regular categories, even with Hugo Weaving's daffy, fascinating performance. It might get a little something for the costuming though, as the era-appropriate apparel looks quite fetching, albeit not on the same level as, say, Carol from last year.

Watch this instead?: Young Adult has a concept but adds in a lot more bite and loses the melodrama, and Twin Peaks hits the odd community notes far, far better. Also, just because Kate Winslet's involvement, seek out the tremendously brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.