Critics reviews

Romance in Phantom Thread swings between gothic horror and comedy. In the end it is hard to figure out what exactly has saved the House of Woodcock from the fate of the House of Usher. Whatever it is, Anderson’s sense of macabre humor won’t allow Alma (Vicky Krieps) to kill Reynolds. It’s weirder to watch him squirm.

One of the great strengths of Anderson's script is its innate understanding of the driving forces behind fashion, for designers and models alike. The comments about Alma's physique speak to the contingent nature of her "perfection;" with her youth, her fair European features and her rather tall and thin but still healthy body, Alma is what a casting agent would call a typical "natural beauty." This "naturalness" becomes a great asset in the hands of a Reynolds Woodcock.

The film's apparent severity is a brilliant disguise that only really unravels in retrospect: what's underneath is a battle-of-the-sexes comedy that ruthlessly strips away layers of archetype and artifice to arrive at its maker's most nakedly happily-ever-after ending to date – a resolution whose casual insanity bypasses Hitchcock, makes a beeline for Buñuel, and gets there in one piece.

Paul Thomas Anderson has constructed a mysterious romantic comedy through the very nature of its characters and some cleverly constructed storytelling. Reynolds Woodcock is almost a caricature of a fashion designer—incredibly fussy, a mama's boy still fixated on his dead mother, a creative genius indulged by all with whom he interacts.

Anderson could never be accused of not understanding the texts he engages with, but it's insulting that he presents himself as above the melodrama, that he makes fun of it so extensively. Melodrama takes its subjects – its women – seriously; Anderson does not. Moulding his inspiration in the same way that Reynolds shapes women into ideal figures, Anderson gives us a Gothic woman's picture without the female perspective, an erotic novel without the sex, a melodrama without the sincerity.

It is indeed a triumph of stitchery, combining disparate colors and textures into an apparently seamless garment. To watch it for the first time is to be continually teased by contradictory possibilities, waiting for the moment when one of the characters will be revealed as a psycho-killer, or when all will turn to smiles with the realization that love conquers all.

What's remarkable about Phantom Thread is that it's essentially a small drama, effectively a chamber piece for three main performers, set largely within the confines of Reynolds's London home cum studio. At the same time, it feels like a big film in the way that some '40s and '50s Hollywood romances feel vast, despite restricted settings: it's executed with great opulence, with a sense of detail that makes it seem hugely expansive.

Anderson's stately and stilted treatment of the fashion world made me miss the visceral American subcultures of his early work. . . . But intriguingly, and for the first time in his career, the woman becomes the real protagonist. . . . Their story isn't one of redemption, but a salvage operation, whereby the slightly less neurotic person tosses a lifeline to the one who is going under—in other words, a love story, Anderson-style.

To the deep credit of both Day-Lewis and newcomer Krieps, this love story reverberates with real feeling, emotions ricocheting off the claustrophobic walls. The characters' arguments splutter, overlap, in ways that feel wholly unscripted. We don't argue with one another in perfect sentences. Anderson generously gives scenes lots of space for behavior, listening and talking, pauses.

With a precise blend of comedy and light surrealism, it refracts Du Maurier's Rebecca into the story of a spouse and sister's management of a fragile male ego; Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville anchor the film in beguiling, nuanced depths. Just as Daniel Day-Lewis's character sews hidden messages into garment linings, Anderson implies dormant secrets through his mesmerizing slow zooms—a worthy heir to recurring dreams of Manderley.

Beyond the dazzling performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville; the swooping and/or oddly angled luminous 35-mm cinematography by Anderson himself; the almost omnipresent orchestral score by Jonny Greenwood, which suggests Nelson Riddle on ecstasy, the movie's uniqueness is its fluidly shifting tone.

Up until now, "The Master" was Anderson's best film, but "Phantom Thread" is also, in many ways, an improvement on it. . . . With "The Master" and "Phantom Thread," Anderson tells the same story—in the first film, as tragedy; in the second, as farce. What's remarkable is that the farce turns out to be the more tragic of the two, because the subject of "Phantom Thread" is love, the tumultuous power of love, and the proximity of creation and destruction in art and love alike.