The Dressmaker
Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse
- drama
- comedy
The story
In 1950s Australia, beautiful, talented dressmaker Tilly returns to her tiny hometown to right wrongs from her past. As she tries to reconcile with her mother, she starts to fall in love while transforming the fashion of the town.
What it’s like
Saturated, storybook colour against sun-bleached red dust: bright Technicolor frocks, pastel parlours, and a dry Australian town that glows at midday and turns sepia at dusk. The camera works in a stylised, melodramatic register, with symmetrical compositions, slow push-ins on faces, and abrupt snap cuts into comic set pieces. The soundtrack leans on crooning 1950s pop, swelling strings, and the rhythmic clatter of sewing machines, with silences used for sting. The vibe is brash, wicked and wounded, a sharp-tongued revenge fantasy with a melancholy undertow beneath the wit. The pacing is brisk and gleeful, lingering on the pleasures of fashion before turning suddenly grim. Its people are a vindictive outsider slowly softening toward the mother and town she once fled, and a community forced to face its own cruelty. Intensity is moderate: bullying and sharp verbal cruelty, a few shootings and deaths, one accidental-looking, some gore played for comic shock rather than dwelt upon, and a brief implied sexual assault in backstory. Good for a stylish night in with friends or a rainy-evening watch. For people who want dark comedy, costume-driven spectacle, and a heroine who gets even in immaculate style.
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