Phantom Thread [Blu-ray]

brilliant the most beautiful woman I've ever seen

this is a film whose rewards are considerable at the surface level of the exquisite presentation and visual thoroughness that keeps the close, all but pedantic, attention a film about couture very properly demands , and at the profounder level of spiritual/emotional satisfaction and its opposite , the many forms emotional emptiness , even starvation , can take . The acting rewards the very closest attention, as ,stitch by minute stitch , it tells its tale of richness and aridity -and of power . Lesley Manville gives distaste and tailoring virtuosic embodiment . DDL has seldom been more beautiful or alarming and - the angel of surprise and relief is wonderfully brought to life by the newcomer actor with her continually fluctuating face and alluring gaucheness . The house is perfect , ,poised , layered , hierarchical , echoing , fragile , cold , as though from a novel by Elizabeth Bowen , many of whose characters this superb trio of actors might have been born to play . The ugly rich clients offer much the form of relief offered by Louie and her companions in (E Bowen s wartime novel) The Heat of the Day ; they are the rude mechanicals to the main protagonists' high-refined , tense , manipulators-and even the "innocent" come to manipulate, in order to survive in this set-up . Not everyone will not be bored .

Of course, Daniel Day-Lewis can capture and project the intensity of a soul in distress, in this case an autistic genius of a modise, in the old sense, a fashionista dress-maker to the wealthy influencers of 1950s London. He is about to be a victim of the Gucci/Quant/Chanel celeb tsunami but that is only given the most passing reference here; the real tragedy is his completely unsatisfying relationship with his pretty young German wife, whom he cannot appreciate beyond her role as muse. She is an imposition on his unhealthily close working relationship with his own sister, and he lives in the shadow of his long-dead mother, but this is no Gothic horror. Instead, it is a long, languid, Bergmanesque tour de force about a toxic relationship, the toxicity of which mushrooms to the level of a bad joke. We are invited to smile, here and there, but the real purpose is to be unsettling. It succeeds brilliantly.

Great acting, gorgeous outfits

The cinematography is excellent, as are all the costumes and the scripts; however, it didn't appear to have a complete storyline. A text-book aloof performance from Mr Day-Lewis, but not a thriller by any means.

Superb acting and beautifully filmed. The relationship between a self-absorbed, genius couturier brother and his business partner/manager sister verges on unhealthy and a tad weird! She vets her brother's relationships with his models and even manages their departure once they become an irritation to this insular man. They live in a world of clipped elegance and strict routine that should never be disrupted or challenged with the ghost of their mother ever present who has shaped his peculiar personality ......Enter his latest muse...who has more substance and gall than he can manage. Quietly she undoes this man and finds his kink...She replaces his mother. How she does this would be a 'spoiler' but it's strange and disquieting.

as always Lewis is brilliant and Vicky Koieps is awesome as well. It's well written and has really complex characters. Theirs so many iconic scenes and it's a powerful film

Dreary, claustrophobic and boring.