I'm sure they're out there -- maybe even from this director -- but I haven't seen a real giallo movie in ages. At least, not a new one. But Peter Strickland's In Fabric is a masterpiece from another era, a smart, stylish, sumptuous sensual feast straight out of the '70s. Plot is more or less negligible, as in the best of the genre, and its more outlandish elements effectively feed its delivery: namely, the bright colors, synthesized music, and heightened sexuality/brutality that is giallo horror. Oh, and did I mention the fetishized red dress that is the villain?
We begin with a series of advertisements for a bourgeois department store before we are suddenly introduced to Sheila (a transformed, almost unrecognizable Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a recent divorcee living with her son, Vince. Vince is a mooching art student who dates intimidating, rude girls and has lots of loud sex, while Sheila is trying to date and manages to catch only losers like her unfortunately named would-be paramour Adonis. And Sheila's domestic troubles pair poorly with her work life; her bank is a darkly funny hostile environment in which she's constantly called in to the bosses' office for warnings. They count and time her trips to the restroom, criticize her handshake and demeanor, and even try to build camaraderie whilst interrogating her professional performance (she's black, the men are white, and yet one proudly proclaims a random stranger to be racist to, seemingly, appear the "good guy" in comparison).
Desperate for a change of pace, Sheila enacts the classic fairytale moment and makes a choice. A new, risque dress will do the trick to spice up her dating life, right? She visits the much-advertised department store -- replete with managers and clerks who are clearly in some kind of witchy cult, though no characters seem to notice -- and selects a one-of-a-kind sex dress. Well, sexy for the 1982 setting, meaning "artery red", long-sleeved but with a modestly plunging neckline, knee-length and with a single, deadly black rose at the waist. It doesn't take long for the dress to, well, take on a bit of night life of its own. And by the second half of the movie, its life drastically changes the format, function, and focus of the story, casting Shelia aside and embracing another character altogether; I wondered briefly if this would be an anthology film or if perhaps this would make a better miniseries than single movie.
But before you start rolling your eyes about a killer dress -- or, that is, a dress that kills -- be aware that this movie's supernatural elements are never explained away. This is no plot-thick, action-packed slasher movie like those iconic works of Dario Argento or Mario Bava. This is pure atmosphere, often more sensational and bizarre than literal, and the movie works hard to put you into a sensual awareness of beauty and its dangers. You could read a lot into this movie, and it darkly comments on consumerism, capitalism, fetishism, and of course the troubles of working-class women. It's also about salesmanship, deception, seduction, forbidden desires, and the cost of getting what we want. But, then, it's also about a coven of witches who sell dresses and enact sexual fantasies with mannequins.
So take it for what you will. I liked it for style, art, and its stinging mix of horror with humor. I also like its ballsy premise, almost as if writer and director Peter Strickland were daring us to challenge his power to deliver a movie that asks us to buy into a killer dress and then, moreover, to end up kind of rooting for the dress by the end.
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