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anhed-nia · 4 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/24/2019: IN FABRIC

I often like to say that an interestingly bad movie can be more valuable than an easily-grasped good movie. We don’t really get anywhere by just being placated by art, but we have a chance to expand our minds through the useful exercise of analyzing why things don’t exactly work. I’d love to be able to say this about Peter Strickland’s latest mindbender IN FABRIC, which is one of the most frustrating new movies I have seen in a very long time, but I’m honestly not even sure how to describe it.

What’s it about, at least? IN FABRIC is composed of two slightly overlapping stories about a cursed dress. In the first, a middle aged single mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) tries to reenter the dating pool, but is thwarted first by her asshole son (Jaygann Ayeh) and his dominatrix-like girlfriend (the invariably wonderful Gwendoline Christie), and then by the mysteriously corrosive effects of a sexy red dress that she purchased from a WESTWORLD-like department store. Once the dress has had its way with her, it is used to humiliate a nebbishy washing machine repairman (Leo Bill) on the brink of an unhappy marriage. Having made contact with the dress, he too will meet an unfortunate end.

IN FABRIC is filled with weird little ideas that are not arranged neatly enough to form a satisfying pattern. Themes like sexual repression, corporate oppression, and domestic frustration never quite come together into an actual statement. The movie seems to contain a STEPFORD WIVES-like commentary on gender and consumerism, but it’s far too concerned with its carefully constructed appearance to squeak out a completely coherent thought. Scenes of a gynoid salesperson (Fatma Mohamed, who is really doing her damnedest here) babbling in fashion-speak brush up against being funny, but when things at the store disintegrate into an embarrassingly protracted threesome between two employees and a mannequin, it’s hard to hold a smile. As one might expect from having seen other Strickland efforts like the gialloesque BERBERIAN SOUND SYSTEM and THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, one finds the mark of the likes of Mario Bava, Jean Rollin, and Walerian Borowczyk on IN FABRIC (and Barry Adamson plays a small role, for bonus hepness), but I’m not sure to what end. The movie’s underpinnings are too unclear for it to be really engrossing, and its shades of black comedy are overwhelmed by its arresting beauty, leaving the audience with something too confusing to be scary, and too pretentious to be really funny.

In spite of my dismissive remarks, when I first saw this film, I was extremely annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I resented being suckered by its repetitive bait-and-switch tactics, drawing me in with gorgeous imagery, repulsing me with half-baked humor, then pulling me back with something really funny like the hypno-erotic effects of Leo Bill’s washing machine instructions, then sending me packing again with its repulsively overblown scenes of sensuality. Even its diptych structure is awkward and ill-advised, with the connections between the two segments--washing machines, carbon monoxide poisoning, the term “bananas”--being too tenuous to be convincing. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is so charismatic that she nearly carries the cumbersome weight of the first section, but once she’s gone, so is my reason to really care. And yet, lodged in the middle of this ponderous nonsense is one of my favorite single scenes in any recent film, in which Jean-Baptiste’s washing machine goes completely berserk (sorry, “bananas”) and nearly kills her before shaking itself apart, practically to its very atoms. The idea of malevolent anthropomorphic furniture and utilities is excitingly ridiculous AND speaks potently to the fear of being unsafe in one’s own home, of losing control in one’s life. If only everything in the movie were this harrowing and hilarious at the same time.

#in fabric #peter strickland #gwendoline christie #marianne jean-baptiste #leo bill #fatma mohamed #barry adamson #black comedy #fantasy #horror #supernatural #curse #fashion #blogtober #Jaygann Ayeh

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