Showing posts with label kate winslet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kate winslet. Show all posts

Sunday, November 1, 2015

The dressmaker


DIRECTORJocelyn Moorhouse  LEAD CAST:  Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving  ART DIRECTOR:  Lucinda Thomzon  AUTHOR: Rosalie Ham based on her novel “The Dressmaker  SCREENPLAY:  Jocelyn Moorhouse,  P. J. Hogan  FILM EDITOR: Jill Bilcock  MUSIC:  David Hirschfelder  GENRE: Comedy-Drama  CINEMATOGRAPHER: Donald McAlpine  PRODUCER:  Sue Maslin  PRODUCTION DESIGN: Roger Ford   COSTUME DESIGNERS: Marion Boyce, Margot Wilson  PRODUCTION COMPANIES: Film Art Media, Apollo Media, Screen Australia  DISTRIBUTORS:  Universal Pictures  FILMING LOCATION:  Australia  LANGUAGE: English  RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes
Technical assessment: 3.5
Moral assessment:  3
CINEMA rating:  V18
In 1951, Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Kate Winslet) returns to her small one-street hometown of Dungatar, in Australia. It is clear from the first words Tilly speaks that she has a purpose for returning: “I am back, you bastards!”  Barely ten years old, Tilly was sent out of town when she was implicated in the death of a bully-classmate.  After having lived and studied haute couture in the world’s fashion capitals London, Milan, and Paris, Tilly is now an expert dressmaker returning home to reconcile with her ailing mother, “Mad Molly” (Judy Davis) and to piece together a vaguely remembered but traumatic past.  Molly has difficulty remembering, but the town’s denizens don’t—they treat Tilly like a pariah, calling her a murderer, until she transforms the frumpy store clerk Gertrude Pratt (Sarah Snook) into a femme fatale.

       Adapted from a novel of Rosalie Ham and co-written by director Jocelyn Moorhouse, The dressmaker creatively stitches together swatches of different genres—drama, comedy, tragedy, satire, whodunit—laced with seriousness and humor, silliness and sarcasm, but always with great panache.   The very unpredictability of this heady and fascinating brew is what keeps the viewers at the edge of their seats lest they miss a frame and fail to make sense out of the mishmash.  The cast reads like a Who’s Who of Australian cinema, flawlessly bringing to life a fictitious little town filled with quirky characters and juicy secrets.  Winslet is a consummate actor here, giving Tilly such tone and depth that enables the character to elicit audience sympathy in any situation.  
        Not until the end will The dressmaker’s agenda be finally revealed.  And the moral value of it should generate hours of animated conversation at the dinner table.  After all those twists and turns the story makes, the main protagonist’s quest ends in a symbolic, sweeping gesture:  Tilly rolls out a bolt of red fabric between her house and the town center, and…?  Is she finally forgiving her tormentors and welcoming them into her heart, or is she burning bridges?