Phantom Thread

The title points three ways.

        (i) To the brilliant, eccentric dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, the phantom thread alludes to the little secrets he hides inside his creations: his mother’s portrait under the canvas of his jacket, little messages, a talisman like the “never cursed” he plants in the Belgium princess’s wedding gown. These are ghostly presences. 

(ii) More broadly, it suggests the magic of his craft, his famous “touch” that pulls the superior materials together into an even more brilliant whole. It’s the genius he brings to the “trade” his mother taught him, the genius that makes him the dominant figure in 1950s London fashion (before the working class eruption of the Beatles, Carnaby Street, etc.). 

(iii) Then there’s the love story — the core of this lush drama. This phantom thread is the mysterious element that draws together the handsome rich designer and the awkward country inn waitress. Trying to define this explains the opening (and returned to) scene of Alma being interviewed by a reporter about their relationship.

In fact, the reporter is an intriguing ambiguity. Why is he interviewing her? Is he a fashion feature writer or a crime reporter” Is he sniffing out a new style trend or a mushroom snuff? Either explanation, i.e., either thread, is a phantom we need not pursue.

Suffice it that the film chronicles a fascinating, unusual and therefore probably quite representative anatomy of a love affair. 

It’s especially quirky in its general exclusion of sex. It avoids the obvious. Woodcock (the name admits a retreat from fleshy sex stuff) has a ravenous appetite — but it’s exclusively for food, as his breakfasts demonstrate. Alma’s first note to him addresses “the hungry boy,” an affectionate reduction. 

Alma’s initial appeal is to his designer aesthetic: he likes a model with no breasts and a bit of a belly. But when she moves in he gives her a separate room, next to his but not with him.

For he also has a ravenous hunger for complete control over his life. He doesn’t want his work or meals or emotional balance ever disturbed. Hence he’s a confirmed bachelor, though he explains that as his attempt to avoid the inevitable deceits of marriage. 

Alma loses him when — against his sister Cyril’s strong advice — she springs a surprise romantic dinner on him. Woodcock can’t abide surprises. Oddly, he handles having a sister named Cyril! But this is a story of irregular sexuality. 

Alma’s entrance ends his apparent career of serial mistresses, with whom he is early infatuated before he finds them irritating enough to let Cyril get rid of them. Alma brings new life: “Who is this lovely creature making the house smell so nice?”

Their romance traces the shift of power from the totally self-absorbed man to the plain woman who struggles to sustain her own identity. He doesn’t respect her taste, personality, her desires, preferring to treat her as if she were just another material from which he fashions his work. The model is a tool of the dress. If anything, he cedes her less respect than he does his antique lace. 

“Alma” of course means “soul.” Paradoxically, the woman who brings soul and warmth to the cold Woodcock can only do it by shattering his independence — here, through poisoned mushrooms. She makes him physically sick to heal him emotionally. 

The dressmaker becomes human, properly appreciative of his woman, only after she forces him into some dependence upon her. Then her tending him supplants his earlier exclusive commitment to his dead mother: “It's comforting to think the dead are watching over the living. I don't find that spooky at all.”  In his delirium her entrance drives out his vision of his dead mother.

The first poisoning has him fall and ruin the wedding gown he’s finishing. But his seamstress crew solves the problem without him. Here he achieves an identity and success outside his work. He marries Alma. So much for his “I’m a confirmed bachelor. Incurable.” Alma cures him of isolated bachelorhood as well as the poisoning. One poison drives out the other. 

But he lapses from their healthy independence, prompting him to want Cyril to despatch her as well. When Alma’s second dose confirms their union, she tells him what she is doing: 

"I want you flat on your back. Helpless, tender, open with only me to help. And then I want you strong again. You're not going to die. You might wish you're going to die, but you're not going to. You need to settle down a little.”

Even without knowing what she has done to him, he accepts it: “Kiss me, my girl, before I'm sick.” In context, that’s as romantic as the opening sonnet of Romeo and Juliet. As Alma tells Dr. Hardy, “Reynolds has made my dreams come true. And I had given him what he desires most in return…. Every piece of me.”
     The park idyll, with Woodcock and Alma playful of a workday afternoon, sister Cyril happily tending the infant in its carriage, may give the film a conventional happy ending. Love conquers all, etc. Or it may be just another projection of Alma’s fantasy. Which it is may depend on what that journalist is writing.