IN FABRIC (September 2018)

   

IN FABRIC

(September 2018)

“A purchase on a horizon, a panoply of temptation. Can a curious soul desist?”

“I’m just looking, thank you.”

“The hesitation in your voice soon to be an echo in the recesses of the spheres of retail.”

I don’t know about you, but if a salesperson walked up to me with that spiel, I would not hang about to hear more…

Particularly if I’ve already seen the creepiest TV advert ever* for the shop’s latest sale…

“You who wear me will know me.”

Peter Strickland’s In Fabric kicks off with Sheila Woolchapel (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a lonely mother just trying to find love and intimacy who happens to visit Dentley & Soper’s, leaving the premises with the singular “Ambassadorial Function Dress”--a chiffon and silk and satin number in, get this, artery red--in stock.

A dress that happens to be, gulp, haunted.

“The very purpose of this seasonal retail occasion is to expunge. Returning what has already left the Ladies’ Fashion Boutique of Dentley & Soper’s Trusted Department Store goes against the nature of things.”

A haunted (or in some cases, cursed) fashion item featuring in a horror film is nothing new, of course.

Some that come quickly to mind: Kim Yong-gyun’s Bunhongshin (The Red Shoes), Won Shin-yeon’s Gabal (The Wig, AKA Scary Hair), the more recent Bad Hair (from Justin Simien, which features a “possessed weave”), and Elza Kephart’s Slaxx (killer jeans, natch).**

And while some of those titles lean more into the comedic side of their horror-comedy combo, there’s still something undeniably unnerving about having something that you’re wearing--that, by its very nature, is something that rests snugly against your body--have a malevolent mind of its own, even if there are some laughs mixed in with all of the chills.

Trust Peter Strickland to toss his hat into this particular horror movie ring…

“But your dismissal of such a prestigious consumerist festivity leaves me bereft.”

If you’ve seen Berberian Sound Studio (and if you haven’t, please, please, please do yourself a favor and seek it out), you’ll know what I mean when I say that Strickland is the kind of director whose work is definitely experiential. Like David Lynch, the way he combines visuals with sound and music is alchemical in nature, disturbingly bewitching.

Just like that artery red dress.

And while there is a ribbon of drily absurd humor that flows through its runtime, In Fabric also drapes us with an unsettling, inescapable tone, almost like that artery red dress settling down all around us, brushing up relentlessly against our bare, viewer’s skin…

The inner, hidden workings of the retail world have never been quite this surreal and creepy on film***…

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of a dress.”

* Courtesy of Julian House, who also worked on Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio.

** For the record, I’ve seen all of these, except for Slaxx.

*** The closest I think we’ve come to something like this is Kim Sung-ho’s Geoul Sokeuro (Into the Mirror), in which bizarre goings-on mar the intended re-opening of the shopping mall, Dreampia. Though to be frank, that film doesn’t even come close to the unsettling strangeness of Strickland’s vision of Dentley & Soper’s…

Comics, though, are another matter entirely…

Eerie retail hijinx may be found in Christopher Cantwell and I.N.J. Culbard’s Everything, from Dark Horse comics, edited by the one and only Mother of Vertigo, Karen Berger…

Parting Shot: If you find yourself enamored with Strickland’s aesthetic, then I implore you to also check out his definitely not horror piece, The Duke of Burgundy, as well as his contribution to The Field Guide to Evil, “Cobblers’ Lot,” loosely based on the Hungarian folktale, “The Princess’s Curse”.

(In Fabric quad and OS’ courtesy of impawards.com.)