When Paul Thomas Anderson was conceiving his latest film, “Phantom Thread,” a story set in the glamorous world of dressmaking in 1950s post-war London, but not at all about fashion, he was waking from a fever dream. “I was very, very sick in bed one night and my wife looked at me with a love and affection I hadn’t seen in a long time,” he said to great laughs (you’ll understand when you see the film). “And so, I called Daniel [Day-Lewis] the next day and said, ‘I think I have a good idea for a movie.’ ” It’s a typical Anderson-ian response, so dryly told you can’t really tell whether he was being serious or joking and it’s probably a little bit of both.
But “Phantom Thread” is about love and tenderness, among many other things — or as Daniel Day-Lewis suggests, “the impossibility of setting yourself against the current of the times” — so sarcastic or not, there’s correlation to the idea of an affectionate lover tending to a genius craftsman. “And then we saw a picture of [famous Spanish Basque fashion designer] Cristóbal Balenciaga,” Anderson said. “And then one thing led to another and then there was fashion books all over our house and the next thing you knew we were writing and researching and talking and then it kept going and going and going until it was impossible to stop and you didn’t want to stop and it seemed really exciting to attack the thing.”
“Phantom Thread,” which screened for a jam packed, attentive audience at the DGA theater in New York, centers on renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his highly-controlled world of dressing royalty, movie stars and the cultural elite of London. His domineering sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) runs the au courant House Of Woodcock apparatus with an iron fist of military operation level efficiency. Committed to bachelorhood, women enter and leave Woodcock’s life with ease, but the perfectionist tailor’s world is turned upside down upon the arrival of Alma (relative newcomer Vicky Krieps) who soon finds her life swept up in the fast-moving, precise microcosm of haute couture.
There’s little one can say about “Phantom Thread,” but it’s Daniel Day-Lewis’ final performance before self-imposed retirement and let’s just say some actors like to leave it all on the table before they walk away.
Why did Daniel Day-Lewis take on the part of an exacting, genius dressmaker? “Paul just needed an old man,” Day-Lewis quipped, “I just happened to fit the bill. “
“I wasn’t sick of course, but it made me sick over the course of time,” he said to confused laughs which were elucidated later. One thing’s for sure; while influenced by the aforementioned Balenciaga — PTA and Day-Lewis also named checked Norman Hartnell, Hardy Amies, Michael Chirad, and Irish dressmakers like John Cavanagh, Digby Morton, Charles James and Victor Stiebel — there’s one famous designer that the film wasn’t modeled on.
“We splashed around in all their experiences,” Day-Lewis said of the mélange of designers they looked at. “And as much as Charles James features in the imagined genesis of the work, I think pretty soon you realize, his life, as fascinating as it was, was not the story we wanted to explore.”
Here’s a few highlights from the post-screening Q&A with all the main cast in attendance including Day-Lewis, Manville, Krieps and, of course, PTA as well.
Lesley Manville and Daniel Day-Lewis were siblings from another mother.
Manville said she and Day-Lewis fleshed out their characters once they met over text in a strange, “hybrid” way of getting the Woodcock siblings off the ground. “We grew up together, but we grew up separately,” Day-Lewis said of their bond. “I had always wanted to work with Lesley and had been aware and loved her work long time, so strangely, I don’t know how it is you can believe that a person can be your sister, but it never occurred to me that Leslie couldn’t be my sister.” Manville shot back, “I am your sister.”
Having not read the fine print, Vicky Krieps thought the script she was reading was a student film.
A Luxembourgian actress with an odd sense of humor, Krieps was unambiguous when asked if being a muse was difficult. “Yes,” she said flatly. “It requires a lot of patience and restraint which I don’t have. I don’t have patience. I think to be a muse is a lot of work.”
But the best anecdote was saved for the manner in which Krieps landed the role. She was given a script from her agent, but didn’t read the email too closely (“I didn’t read it properly in my Luxembourg-ish farmer girl way”), and then spent four days procrastinating putting herself on tape for the audition. Her agent called after PTA was given the tape and liked what he saw. The auteur wanted to talk to her on the phone. Krieps said, “Yeah, ok.” The agent then had to inform her it was Paul Thomas Anderson who had written the script. And three weeks after she got the part she discovered that Daniel Day-Lewis would be playing opposite her. “When I made the tape I thought it was for a student film,” she laughed. “The writing was that good,” PTA quipped back.