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12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 OCTOBER 2019 FILM FILM BRITISH writer-director Pe- ter Strickland is certainly be- coming a name to watch out for in the world cinema scene, even if his nightmarish exer- cises in dark excess could be construed too unsettling for some, and shallow exercises in formal play for others. Still, there's no denying that his two most recent films – the BDSM-tinged chamber drama Duke of Burgundy (2014) and the surreal mael- strom of psychological hor- ror that was Berberian Sound Studio (2012) – left an argu- ably indelible mark, etching him into place as a distinctive film-maker with the power to disturb and entertain in equal measure. Now, he returns somewhat to the Italian 'giallo' cinema influences that were such a key component of 'Berberian', with an amusingly cruel dark fairy-tale set in a near-but- remote past and lodged firmly in the world of British High Street shopping. Put-upon bank clerk and recent divorcee Sheila (Mari- anne Jean-Baptiste) decides to give dating a try in reaction to the news that her ex-husband has found "a new bird" – a fact unceremoniously announced by her son Vince (Jaygann Ayeh), whose own girlfriend Gwen (Gwendoline Christie) is low-key menaced on a daily basis in her own home, lead- ing Sheila to refer to her as a "femme fatale". But little does Sheila know that she's about to encounter far more sinister femme fatales with real blood on their agenda. Stepping into the Dentley and Soper's de- partment store, she is met by a ludicrously loquacious sales assistant, Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed), whose all- black demeanour and thick Romanian accent will signify to all and sundry audiences that something is seriously amiss here, but that only meets mild bemusement from Sheila and, indeed, the shop's many customers. But the weirdness becomes increasingly harder to ignore when a striking red dress bought by Sheila ahead of an ultimately disastrous date begins to wreak all sorts of havoc – a supernatural drive towards chaotic oblivion that ultimately even reels in a hap- less washing machine repair- man and would-be husband Reg (Leo Bill). In Fabric opens with a strik- ing credit sequence that could be experienced as both an em- bedded trailer for the film it- self, and a communication of its 'giallo' bona fides, with mu- sic and bright Technicolour visuals that recall Dario Ar- gento at his most influential, in what is yet another itera- tion of a series of rolling trib- utes to that iconic filmmakers legacy we've been seeing of late: from Luca Guadagnino's direct (though very much free) remake of Argento's Sus- piria, as well as the Vanessa Paradis-starring queer remix of giallo touchstones, Knife + Heart. But it is also a sequence that firmly establishes Strickland's unabashed and unapologetic confidence about what lies ahead. In Fabric walks a wob- bly tightrope between the striking and the ridiculous, between the horrific and the absurdly banal, and it's to Strickland's credit that he never allows himself to plunge into the abyss that very much lies below him. If the film has one problem, it is the clear re- Rising star British filmmaker Peter Strickland returns just in time for Halloween with a wickedly funny and gorgeously designed horror caper about a 'killer' red dress Teodor Reljic The Masque of the Red Dress