Cast: Kate Winslet, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Judy Davis, Sarah Snook, Caroline Goodall, Kerry Fox, Rebecca Gibney, James Mackay, Hayley Magnus, Gyton Grantley
Rating: B
The Dressmaker is a film with a combination of several elements – almost too many to count. Based on the novel written by Rosalie Ham, this is a tale about revenge, love, murder, mystery, abuse, judgement, and a complex relationship between mother and daughter. Set in the 1950s in the dry dusty town of Dungatar, a fictitious place located in the middle of nowhere Australia, the film tells a story of a young woman banished from her home town as a child that returns to the miserable village to find the truth about her childhood. Will the storylines in this little drama blend together or just make an incoherent script audiences will have to decipher?
Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Kate Winslet) makes a grand return to the place where she was born and finds Mad Molly (Judy Davis), her somewhat senile mother who is living in less than human conditions in the home sitting on the hill overlooking Dungatar that they once shared. Tilly is there to reconnect with her mother with the hopes of bringing her memories back to life to help Tilly remember something awful that happened to her as a child. The town folks are shocked to see the child they banished years ago return as a beautiful successful haute-couture designer. Tilly takes no shame in flaunting her designer clothes in front of the horrible jealous inhabitants of the desert dump and her sophisticated sensual presence catches the eye of Teddy (Liam Hemsworth). Teddy is a local athletic hero and hunk that all the girls want, but he recognizes real beauty in Tilly and sets his energy on winning her heart.
Tilly can create miracles out of her fashion designing and overnight she is able to transform the frumpy females of the local village into highly stylish ladies. But, the nasty group of locals would still rather destroy Tilly because she represents everything they loath. Some of the poisonous inhabitants include a fanatical religious hunchback pharmacist, the cruel soulless headmaster of the local school, a womanizing councilman, and a band of envious vengeful grotesque women. Sergeant Farrat (Hugo Weaving), a lovable in-the-closet cross-dresser, manages to rise above the nasty people he’s surrounded by and becomes Tilly’s trusted and loyal friend. With Teddy, Sergeant Farrat, and Mad Molly at her side, Tilly sets out on a mission to solve the mystery of why she was eradicated from her hometown and separated from her mother.
The small town fable bounces around from Tilly showing off her designing skills as she gives many of the ladies in Dunnager a “Pretty Woman” moment, to Tilly falling in love, to tragic deaths, and the big reveal of what happened 25 years ago that created such a scandal. It is a huge stretch to convince the audience that 33-year-old Hemsworth is the same age as the luscious 40-something-year-old Winslet. As a matter of fact, Winslet’s character is supposed to be the same age as all the younger characters that are no more than early to mid-30s. It’s pretty unclear why the filmmakers just did not find an actress that was in the right age range. Thankfully, Winslet and Hemsworth have a fair amount of chemistry and she is such an accomplished actress that one can overlook the silliness of having her play a character years younger than her actual age. As the mystery of what happened to Tilly starts to reveal itself, the theme shifts from a love story to that of revenge, but before too much time is spent on any one thing there are sudden shifts into the storylines of the supporting characters. The connection between starting an at home design business and solving memory loss often feels very disconnected.
There are several scene stealers between Tilly and Mad Molly that will have audiences rolling. The renewal of the relationship between mother and daughter offers some heartfelt, charming, and clever moments. Judy Davis is amazing as Molly and her performance alone makes this film worth watching. There are plenty of mishaps with all the vulgar low life characters in the story that provide tons of laughter. The fashions from the 1950s era displayed on the screen are pretty amazing and flashes of fabric add just a right amount of couture to the dusty backdrop of the film. The problem with the movie is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is The Dressmaker a story of romance, vengeance, a tragedy, or a comedy? There is so much going on and the film never roots itself in any one place.
Despite the issues with this over-the-top melodrama that has a bit of a slow start and several sluggish moments, The Dressmaker is still, surprisingly enough, a very entertaining film. It is the comical cast (with Kate Winslet and Judy Davis as standouts) that manages to stitch many of the disjointed scenes together so that threads of the discombobulated tale don’t completely unravel.
