The Dressmaker 2016

This is a dark grim social comment on a parochial, narcissistic rural 1950’s Victorian town. The film is a good representation of the novel; however, it deviates on a number of points. It’s exaggerated farce and dark humour is more dramatized than that of the novel. Kate Winslet, steals the show as stunning, glamourous and enigmatic, Tilly, who has made a success of her life, but returns to her hometown.

Despite Tilly returning as an accomplished dressmaker, unrecognisable and sophisticated most of the town treats her with suspicion, derision and continues to circulate malicious gossip. The audience eventually learns about her terrible secret and reason for the town’s distrust of her.

Other people’s secrets from the past haunt and hunt Tilly as they simmer beneath the surface and are omnipresent revealing flashes of her past. The film at times is very graphic often caricaturing small town nastiness and tastelessness