In Fab­ric – first look review

The Box­ing Day sales are a noble tra­di­tion among British depart­ment stores, a time at which cap­i­tal­ism is freely cel­e­brat­ed and retail­ers go to great lengths to entice cus­tomers beyond their fes­tooned facades. This quaint cus­tom dat­ing from the Vic­to­ri­an era pro­vides the back­drop for Peter Strickland’s sump­tu­ous new fea­ture, in which a haunt­ed gar­ment stocked by a ven­er­a­ble Lon­don retail­er caus­es hav­oc for some unsus­pect­ing cus­tomers. The premise alone is cause for befud­dle­ment, but as always with Strick­land, a plot syn­op­sis doesn’t real­ly do jus­tice as to how utter­ly bizarre the film real­ly is.

In the state­ly halls of Dent­ley and Soper’s Depart­ment Store, a dress awaits its new home. Only one dress, mind – a vision in ​‘artery red’, only one in stock, size 36. New­ly divorced Sheila (Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste) hap­pens upon it while search­ing for an out­fit for a date, and is con­vinced to buy it by a cryp­tic, high­ly per­sua­sive shop assis­tant (Fat­ma Mohamed). While ini­tial­ly delight­ed with her sump­tu­ous bar­gain, Sheila’s pride quick­ly sours as strange things start to hap­pen – mean­while, after hours at Dent­ley and Sop­er, the female staff form a strange sort of coven, per­form­ing dis­turb­ing rit­u­als which hint at the institution’s true sin­is­ter nature.

Much like The Duke of Bur­gandy, Strickland’s flair for dra­mat­ic pro­duc­tion design gives In Fab­ric a dis­tinct rich­ness. But the film’s sound design is its most remark­able ele­ment – whether it’s rustling cloth or unnerv­ing chat­ter that builds to a deaf­en­ing crescen­do. Although the sec­ond act feels sub­stan­tial­ly weak­er than the first, the unbri­dled weird­ness of the film ren­ders it com­plete­ly com­pelling, a sort of Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place meets Say Yes to the Dress. Props also to the dynam­ic duo of Julian Bar­ratt and Steve Oram, who add some much-need­ed lev­i­ty as two job­sworth bureau­crats tan­gen­tial­ly con­nect­ed to the main plot.

Two scenes in par­tic­u­lar will like­ly revulse or delight depend­ing on your con­sti­tu­tion, but the film’s stand­out moment involves, odd­ly enough, a wash­ing machine. While it may not con­vert any­one who dis­liked the director’s ear­li­er fea­tures, Berber­ian Sound Stu­dio and The Duke of Bur­gandy, for fans of the strange, stylised world Strick­land has cre­at­ed, In Fab­ric is a rau­cous, full-tilt descent into bish­op-sleeved madness.