Are you being unnerved? There’s always been something creepy and a feeling of being stuck in a time warp about going through department stores. They are the cockroaches of the high street: nothing, but nothing,can kill them: not influencers, fashion blogs, or even ordering online. Still they stand, an uncanny relic of the past, stoic, starchy and unfashionable.
There’s always been something furtive about ladies’ fashion catalogues. Most of us saw semi-naked models, female and male, for the first time in there as children, long before pornography. And the clothes were stoic, starchy and unfashionable.
It’s these two formative experiences that cineaste pervert and auteur Peter Strickland weaves together here. As with most of his work, it’s uncanny and uncomfortably erotic, with a little kink. It’s so sensual you can feel the fabric and skin, and the less savoury aspects of blood and guts, too.
A red dress, in close-ups both banal and fantastical, is a cursed symbol drawing two stories together. It’s got some of the hauntology of ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ or ‘Armchair Thriller’, but with nods to Hitchcock’s’Vertigo’, Argento’s original ‘Suspiria’ and those hellish seventies children’s safety adverts. The feeling of uncanny vibes is further enhanced by Cavern Of Anti- Matter’s gorgeous but disturbing soundtrack.
This being Strickland, it’s more impressionistic than plot -heavy. But without spoilers, I will say that Sheila (the brilliant Marianne Jean- Baptiste) is a socially awkward bank worker, desperate to get out into the dating scene following a bitter divorce. She enters a department store, led by the glamorous but deeply sinister Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed) whose pronouncements on clothes read like Gertrude Stein’s ‘Tender Buttons’. Here, she buys the beautiful dress, which sends her on a dangerous trajectory of misfortune.
The second half of the film, which feels less successful in its banality, follows a couple, Reg and Babs Speakes (Leo Bill and Hayley Squires) who after fifteen dreary years together, decide to wed. He’s a washing machine repairer, she’s a textbook shrew. This is less satisfying as a narrative whole, a little contrived after the visceral sting of the first story. But Clive and Stash, portrayed by Steve Oram and Julian Barratt, unite both stories in a humorous and brittle manner, ramping up the ridiculousness of corporate speak and team building nonsense.
Still, as uneven as it is, I love the visual flair and sound- Strickland always delivers gorgeous catastrophe- and fucked-up fetish, wit and fantasy is safe in his hands.
Available right now on BBC iPlayer.
