The Dressmaker

Synopsis: In 1951 Myrtle "Tilly" Dunnage (Kate Winslett) returns to her Australian hometown of Dungatar. She has been away for years, working as a dressmaker in the fashion centres of Milan and Paris and now is on the trail of the truth about her past. She is rumoured when young to have killed a fellow schoolmate and to have been sent away by local policeman Sgt Farrat (Hugo Weaving). Teddy (Liam Hemsworth) thinks Myrtle has returned for him, while Myrtle’s dotty mother, Mad Molly (Judy Davis), takes some initial convincing that this is even her daughter. When Myrtle’s skill with the sewing machine becomes apparent, all the townswomen want a piece of the glamour, but it is revenge that is foremost in Myrtle’s mind.

Based upon a 2000 novel by Rosemarie Ham, and co-written by Moorhouse with husband P.J. Hogan of Muriel’s Wedding fame, The Dressmaker is both larger-than-life and quintessentially Australian. Moorhouse, whose last Australian film was the much-awarded, Proof (1992), has been away from the directorial chair for 18 years (she has not directed a film since A Thousand Acres in 1997). She returns to native soil with a quirky flourish in this story of love, revenge and haute couture in a land Downunder.

The first things that strikes one about the production is the gloriously saturated colour of Don McAlpine's cinematography and the film's tongue-in-cheek style as Tilly arrives in town to the tune of Western gunslinger music, except her weapon of choice is her Singer sewing machine. We are then treated to a plethora of characters, many of them back-of-Bourke archetypes played with a mix of observational humour and satirical bite.  Small town prejudices and mean-spirited gossip are aired, along with darker doings, such as marital rape, infidelity and murder (men do not scrub up well in this story). Numerous well-known Australian actors play the roles. Of note are Kerry Fox as Beulah, the town’s most malicious snoop, Sarah Snook as Gertrude, the plain Jane who is transformed into a glamour puss, Alison Whyte as the pill-popping depressed mother of the dead boy, along with many other small but strong performances by the likes of Shane Jacobsen, Gyton Grantley, Julia Blake, Rebecca Gibney, Terry Norris and Barry Otto, to name but a few.  Although the characters are too numerous to recount, what stands out is the extravagant zaniness of so much of what occurs and this provides a lot of wonderful ongoing laughs, particularly Hugo Weaving’s turn as Sgt. Farrat’s out-of-the-closet cross-dresser.

For all that is enjoyable about the film there is an unevenness of  tone that creeps in at times. The seriousness of the Teddy/Myrtle love affair seems at odds with much of the otherwise overblown tale, not to mention the jarring mismatch in the actors ages (Winslet is forty, Hemsworth twenty-five). The contrast between the archetypal Ockerness (Winslet does an excellent Aussie accent) and high fashion stakes feels strident at times whilst the transformation of Gertrude into a sexy siren is over-played. The convolutions of the town’s hidden secrets around the presumed murder and long-concealed infidelities become almost overwrought culminating in an over-the-top theatre Eisteddfod at the film’s conclusion that is more confusing than invigorating.

For all its wilful excessiveness, The Dressmaker is good fun with Moorhouse taking much that we love, and much that we cringe from, in small town Australian life and turning it into what should be a crowd-pleaser.

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