Phantom Thread

1950s London: renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the center of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutantes and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock’s life, providing the confirmed bachelor with inspiration and companionship, until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by love.

Every bit as transgressive as Punch-Drunk Love, Phantom Thread is a battle of the sexes comedy (and a black comedy at that) dressed up as a prestige picture.

The world of Reynolds Woodcock — its silky elegance, focused discipline and fetishistic attention to sartorial and ritualistic detail — is captured behind a scrim of nostalgia and romance by Anderson, who invites viewers to luxuriate in the creamy interiors of Woodcock’s townhouse and atelier, the dreamy mood heightened by Jonny Greenwood’s jazz-inflected musical score. Although Woodcock has disposed of his latest romantic liaison as Phantom Thread opens, his next conquest presents herself when he stops for a meal in the country and orders a ploughman’s breakfast from a bright-eyed waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps). By the time he’s completed his compulsively specific order, the mutual seduction is complete, and the stylish, enigmatic, ultimately perversely playful game is afoot.

What ensues is a delicious slice of teatime gothic reminiscent of Rebecca and Suspicion, wherein love and sexual attraction become vectors for mistrust, battles of wills and power dialectics of Hegelian proportions.

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

This is a profoundly, intensely, extravagantly personal film.

AO Scott, New York Times

This devilishly funny and luxuriantly sensuous film is so successful as entertainment that it’s hard to stop and notice the extreme degree of craft that went into its construction.

Dana Stevens, Slate