Phantom Thread **

Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis reunite after the intense There Will Be Blood with Phantom Thread.

Phantom Thread is a psychological Drama about a emotional dysfunctional highly regarded dressmaker Woodcock (Day Lewis) who after he dispatches his current girlfriend begins a new romance of kinds with a waitress he just met Alma.

Woodcock is basically a emotional crippled highly sensitive perfectionist who catching him smiling is about as often as the full moon who can make life for those around him pleasant or painful.

Women are drawn into his life as his muse as he make dresses for them and they become the face of his label but they all fall under the hammer once his interest or patience runs out which is frequently.

Woodcock regards little or no need for the permanence of Love treating his girlfriends coldly and like staff even telling Alma at one point the painfully obvious “If you don’t like it, fuck off to where you came from” yes no quite Romeo but point made. Alma however is going to try to break Woodcock and get into his life whatever the cost.

Loyalty to the script is paramount with the direction painfully slow and purposefully dated, it looks as through this could have been made decades earlier in the directorial style employed here. This helps the style but certainly not the pace which moves with the urgency of a snail. We are here to engage with every single character trait exposed at every single point.

It’s effectively a punishing watch to get through, much like Silence was but Silence pulled it off where as here unless your hardened fan or have the patience of a saint this film will deliver a outcome that may require repeated viewings I was told I understood it in one and one was enough.

Day Lewis puts his all into his role but after Gangs Of New York and There Will Be Blood it’s a shame this performance will be his rumored last in a love or hate film that may be interesting in a film study class in a University classroom or in film journalist coffee room but to the average viewer this film will be hard painful work like making a wedding dress.