A dress is not just a dress in In Fabric, the latest from writer/director Peter Strickland.
It all starts innocently enough: a woman is looking for a new outfit for a date, and her eye catches a striking red number. The dress fits perfectly, impresses her paramour, and then causes a strange rash. That’s not all the dress has in store for its unsuspected victim, though, and events escalate as the dress moves from person to person with bloodthirsty desire.
As you might guess, there’s more than a little humor woven into the mayhem. This movie is about a killer dress, after all, and luckily Strickland is no novice when it comes to saucy genre fare. His previous film, The Duke of Burgundy, mixed salacious material with intelligent observations about love, and hopefully he can hit a similar mix of high- and low-brow with In Fabric.
The roaming nature of the movie’s focus (the dress) means the cast is rather sprawling. It’s almost all seasoned actors, though, with the likes of Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Gwendoline Christie lining up for slaughter. But it’s that dress that will make or break this bizarre concept, and considering the film’s strong festival run, it seems that the clothes made the film.
In Fabric is directed by Peter Strickland and stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, and Leo Bill. It will be released in the UK on June 28th, 2019. For international release dates, click here.
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