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