In Fabric tells a rather strange tale; A woman decides, on a whim, to buy a red dress during a sale at a department store only to find out the dress is cursed. This might sound outlandish. Surreal even. But in the world created by Peter Strickland, this is relatively commonplace. In fact, no one even notices the peculiar manner in which the statuesque sales associates speak, much less move about in black crepe.
What is it that provokes writer, director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy) to pull stories from the recesses of the mind and interpret them on screen? We had the chance to speak with him here.
HorrorBuzz: What inspired you to make this film, IN FABRIC?
Peter Strickland: Um, I’ve always been into objects and I think with clothing I think there is something so visceral with that. So connected to our emotions our desires, our paranoias. We only scratch the surface of these things in film. If someone close to you dies, looking at their clothing can bring you to tears. Fetichism being turned on by clothing, body dysmorphia how you feel trapped by your body image. Then there is how you can feel transformed by clothing how you can escape yourself and your surroundings by putting something on. To me it’s looking at these very intense reactions to clothing and I guess that was the framework of any kind of message.
Sometimes the danger of this type of film is that it might be perceived as humorous. The reason I spend so much time with the characters is not to punish them, but to get you to relate, Sheila is divorced, her son has that girlfriend. And she just needs some retail therapy. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that in particular.
HB: How did you make a relatively plain red dress so menacing?
PS: Um, I think the number one thing was silence. We were wrestling around with sound in the edit and the material is silk and chiffon. We used a lot of practical effects in post. One of the first things we played with was the dress floating in the air as if it were a jellyfish. We tried hanging it from a drone at one point and it just… it just looks like a moving clothes rack. It was a mixture of trial and error. If you were on set it would have looked a bit ridiculous with people pulling wires and trying to stay out of shot.
HB: There is an amazing aesthetic that is ruthlessly retro, although you never come out and say specifically what the time period is. Can you define what that look is and its inspiration?
PS: Well the inspiration was a place called Jackson’s in Redding that I used to go to as a kid. That was a fascinating place. Pretty much every kid in Redding, their sexuality was somehow formed in that store. You’d buy all your school uniforms there. A lot of these small department stores, they were a mixture of Edwardian Britain and Victorian Britain, and 50’s 60’s 70’s, but they’d never go beyond the 70’s. It was a weird patchwork of these elements. Even in 2013 when they closed if you one in there it felt like you were going back in time. The only reason why I didn’t set it in modern times was because Sheila, the main character, uses a lonely hearts advert to meet someone. With that, you sort of have to sell yourself. I picked 1993 because that was the last year that those adverts were most prevalent. After that internet dating became more dominant. There is one giveaway in the film. I didn’t expect anyone to notice. If you look closely at the newspaper adverts you will see the date on there. There is a small giveaway. But yes, the store always felt like the 70’s and that is what informed the time frame.
HB: What we love about your features is that they sort of exist in this weird nightmare world. What influences you? Where do you come up with this? It’s such a strange place.
PS: Yeah I mean, it’s absolutely a nightmare. Pure retail Nightmare. But as with all nightmares, it’s so relevant to one’s desires and fears and anxieties and hopes as well. The main character, there is no reason why she should be punished but there’s no escape from it either. I guess that’s the type of film I am attracted to; The human subconscious. I think one of the biggest things that got me in the cinema was David Lynch. You’re going into deep into private experiences, fetishism and so on. I’m not making any judgment. It’s just a very private look at clothing. I mean Reg ( a character in the film) has a fetish for hosiery which is influenced by a childhood trip to a department store. His fiancé doesn’t understand it. She just doesn’t get it. She has body dysmorphia and he doesn’t get it either. They’ve got their very intense obsessions but they are still this sweet couple. It’s just looking at the human response. It’s not just clothing it’s a lot more visceral than that. Desire really.
HB: What led you to cast Marianne?
PS: Toby Jones, He was in my second film and I did a play with him in 2015. He suggested her and bought Secrets and Lies, I thought she was wonderful in it. All that I knew is that I was looking for a woman in her 50’s who was British. It could have been anyone, but once Toby suggested Marianne it made sense.
HB: What is it about washer dryer diagnostics that is so erotic?
PS: Yeah that’s a funny one. Half the people that watch it perceive it as erotic and the other doesn’t. When I wrote it I was thinking very much in line with these ASMR videos I was watching on Youtube. That’s a huge part of this film going back to how I remember the stores as a kid. Back then the stores were these very quiet, intimate places. So a lot of it’s muttering, this shop talk, the sound of the cash tills. That became a sort of ASMR trigger. So that kind of led into the washing machine thing. The whole film had to have this ASMR feel going into this mild, euphoric trance. I wanted the whole film to kind of feel like that.
