Film
In Fabric
Peter Strickland • UK 2018 • 118min
DCP • engl. OV
17.10.2020, 22:30 Cinematograph
Set against the backdrop of a wintertime department store sales spree, Peter Strickland’s latest phantasmagoria concerns a cursed scarlet dress as it encounters unsuspecting customers and corrupts their lives.
Obliquely split between two distinct tales in a dreamy divide reminiscent of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Strickland’s film is populated with an idiosyncratic array of indelible characters and imagery. From a lonely divorcee to the wife of a washing-machine repairman with a thousand-yard stare, dissatisfied souls float through a mesmerizing miasma of surreal sights and sounds, sporadically punctuated with bursts of disorienting collage-montage evoking the experimental works of Arthur Lipsett.
Pervading each thread is the witchy sales-matron (Fatma Mohamed) of the demonic department store, who speaks to her clientele in a cryptic verse to mask her dark designs, and an eccentric pair of bureaucrats hilariously portrayed by cult-favourite actors Steve Oram and Julian Barratt. Further bolstered by an entrancing cast that includes Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Gwendoline Christie, to say nothing of the villainous dress itself — which hauntingly sails towards its victims with an eerie glide that flirts with both camp and genuine menace — In Fabric is an absorbing synthesis of the exquisite pastiche Strickland achieved with Berberian Sound Studio and the erotic romanticism of his The Duke of Burgundy, here hemmed to sinister effect. (Toronto International Filmfestival)
Filmeinführung: Marco Friedrich Trenkwalder (DIAMETRALE)
Director, Writer Peter Strickland • Cinematography Ari Wegner • Edit Matyas Fekete • Cast Sidse Babett Knudsen, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Julian Barratt • Music Cavern of Anti-Matter • Producers Ben Wheatley, Kasia Malipan, Andrew Starke • Sales Bankside Films Advanced Music
Peter Strickland was born in 1973 to a Greek mother and British father, and grew up in Reading, Berkshire. He is a director and writer, known for Katalin Varga (2009), Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and Björk: Biophilia Live (2014).
