“In Fabric” (MA) ***

SOME might classify this strong and offbeat feature into the horror genre. I don’t. I’ve seen a number of surrealist movies by great filmmakers, of which “In Fabric” is one.

Film critics have largely ignored surrealism (critics analyse; I’m a reviewer who describes films to help readers decide which films to see about which little independent information is readily available; if what I write is biased, and I readily admit that it can be, at least it’s my bias and not that of some over-paid industry flack).

Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become seriously associated with cinema. Nowadays, it’s expressed mostly in blockbuster movies based on so-called “comic books”, a misnomer since they are neither comical nor books; sadly, they’re now a fact of life and seldom associated with surrealism proper.

“In Fabric”, writer/director Peter Strickland’s fourth feature film in a main stream of shorts and docos, is a kooky movie in the best surreal vein. Its dramatic focus is the red dress which Sheila (spectacular Oscar-winning, English-born actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste of whom Australia has seen not enough) buys in an up-market London boutique staffed by an off-the-wall group of young women, to wear on an exploratory first date. 

Sheila’s experiences wearing the dress are short-lived. She dies in a road accident. We next see it on washing-machine repair-man Reg (Leo Bill) at his bucks party. Reg is about to undergo a visit to a refined kind of hell, including an interrogation by a tough-as-old-boots police person (Caroline Catz in a role as far as can be from “Doc Martin’s” Louisa).

Strickland isn’t trying to get his audience excited by things that don’t often appear in conventional movies – an elderly gentleman masturbating while watching the senior shop lady masturbating a merkin worn by a nude life-like mannequin, Reg’s fiancée Babs (Hayley Squires) undergoing a caesarean delivery. The lighting and backgrounds are often strong and unusual. The music is insistent. 

I found little to laugh at in “In Fabric”, although the couple several seats along the back row (where I prefer to sit) giggled quite often. Reg’s explanation of machine faults did make me smile a little, as did a pair of gay bankers (Steve Oram and Julian Barratt). But I came away pleased that somebody was following the tradition of the great surrealists – Luis Bunuel, Federico Garcia Lorca, Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch.

At Dendy