Phantom Thread, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson

Reportedly Daniel Day-Lewis’s last film, Phantom Thread gives him ample opportunity to employ his bewitching eyes and occasional day-brightening smile to great effect as 50s English haute-couture designer Reynolds Woodcock. He and his sister Cyril, the marvelously icy, efficient, and ruthless Lesley Manville, run a successful business as dressmakers to aristocracy. Cyril oversees daily operations, leaving Reynolds free to design, to imagine, and to insert a little of himself into each garment.

The film opens with him at the end of an affair - the young woman pleads at breakfast for any acknowledgement, but he will not even glance at her. Cyril disposes of her. He goes to a seaside town for a change of pace, and at a restaurant is served by Alma, Vicky Krieps, a refreshingly vital young woman willing to be with him, but grounded enough in herself not to surrender completely to his tastes and demands. This of course makes her highly desirable - she carries her certainty the way he carries his secrets, and they make an excellent combination.

This film is about secrets. Early on, Reynolds reveals that in the labor of creating his mother’s wedding dress (to her second husband), he hid stitched words in parts of the garment. He continues to do that, in a way that suggests both a claim on the wearer and a blessing on her life. Alma can only match him by having her own secrets, and, satisfyingly, she does. Hers too are about exerting possession.

As their relationship deepens, she joins his corps of dressmakers, primarily as his model - it’s not clear what sewing skills she has in a business where every stitch is placed by hand. Cyril is always there. Alma is given a bedroom next door to Reynolds in the house that’s also their workshop, but that door between rooms is a barrier - Cyril ensures everyone knows their place. She and her brother are partners as deep as any married couple - their creative output depends on the fusion of their personalities in a common enterprise. It’s not a pairing that welcomes intrusion.

And yet, Alma is not content to be the model, the muse. She wants more - she wants a full relationship with Reynolds, including love and respect. Watching her conduct herself with enviable surety, the audience is in her corner - we want her to insinuate herself into that rigid couple, to earn a place in their small closed world. If Cyril is the canvas on which this story is told, and Reynolds the brushes, Alma is the paints, arranged by his hand but displaying colors that are hers alone. It is this balance that makes Anderson’s film brilliant.