I have never possessed a great eye for fashion but I found myself drawn to the dresses in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s, revenge comedy drama, The Dressmaker. Starring big names such as Kate Winslet, Hugo Weaving and Liam Hemsworth, anticipation and expectation cloaks this film, but does it deliver?
Set in the remote Australian Outback Town of Dungatar in 1951, Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage returns home for the first time in twenty-five years, having travelled the world and plied her trade as a dressmaker. Instead of welcome, she finds scorn from the most of the townsfolk, including her mother Molly, played by Judy Davis. Tilly seeks not to return to the good graces of her neighbours but to instead find the answers to a murder she was accused of committing when she was a child. But the answers she desires do not come easily and the road forward presents both interesting and amusing challenges.
Kate Winslet outdoes herself as the character Tilly, a confident and independent single woman. In her interactions with the other characters in the village, particularly other women we perceive her worldliness and experience through her sheer confidence. As the dressmaker, it is revealed she has a darker influence than we might have at first suspected. With the gowns she creates she transforms the ladies of the village into facades of who they truly are. I will never forget the amusing sight of watching the ladies of Dungatar strolling around this middle-of-nowhere town in couture gowns and high heels as if it were the most normal thing in the world. In many ways it is the 1950s setting that made this aspect all the more amusing, could you imagine ballroom gowns anywhere but in a ballroom? This is but one of the many differing elements that help bring this film to life.
The oddball characters of Dungatar are another aspect that breathes life into the film; from the beginning Dungatar’s uniqueness is all in part due to its residents. It is not Tilly Dunnage that makes Dungatar interesting but the people living there, from the cross dressing Sergeant Horatio Farrat played by Hugo Weaving to Percival Almanac, the hunchbacked and cruel town chemist. This film is not set in some bland two dimensional Australian country towns, you cannot predict these characters because they all have a story as to who they are, and that is another vital aspect that makes this film worth seeing.
Yet as appealing as all the characters were, there were a few times when the subplots threatened the plot and vice versa. The film had too many characters that could have been better utilized than they were. That is not to say they were handled poorly I merely found myself so invested in the characters that I wanted to learn more about them. At times it felt as if Moorhouse had simply bitten of more than she could chew but thankfully it is something that can be quite easily overlooked.
I highly recommend this film; Moorhouse brings a dark touch to conventional ‘aussie’ humour in this story that will change your perceptions of typical Australian life in the outback.
