#sumptious

There’s constant tension in Phantom Thread. Alma and Reynolds, the couple at the core of the film, brought together under the roof of his luxury fashion house, are always jockeying for power between each other. It should be stressful, intolerable—twisted, even.

Phantom Thread’s major success is that it never feels like that.

In fact, it’s often comical, of the laugh-out-loud variety. As Reynolds Woodcock disparages those around him—“I’m impressed with my own gallantry,” he almost sighs after one bite of a dinner he doesn’t like—the movies smoothly lulls the audience in, encouraging them to root for the union. But their love is like a rose: Beautiful and thorny all the way down.

The central strain is baked into their relationship: Can Alma (Vicky Krieps), withstand the particular tastes of Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis)—and if she does, will it be enough for him? After all, she has been taken in as his latest muse, inspiring him to create the beautiful dresses he’s known for, and often modeling them as well. And when she bridles at his choices (or dares to hold firm as opposition) he becomes a surly child.

How do you root for a dynamic like that?

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson somehow ensures it. Phantom Thread is (not disparagingly) perhaps one of the more manipulative films of 2017, puppeting its audience in order to perform a sort of magic trick: While we’re all looking one way, the film confidently slides the power dynamics with all the effort of sleight of hand. Anderson uses a lush and romantic score by Jonny Greenwood to keep the mood up when he wants, and leaves the couple to their battle when he wants to make the toxicity stick. He isn’t concerned with whether theirs is a comedy or a tragedy, quiet abuse or barbed nurture. When Phantom Thread is over the question isn’t even “who won?” It’s “how?”

Of course, this triumph owes a lot to its players. Day-Lewis could not, at this point in his career (and with this as his swan song) be overstated as an actor who manages to be disarmingly abashed even as he commands the room. Anderson uses this to develop intimacy between the audience and Reynolds, getting the audience just as invested in reading Day-Lewis’ moods as anyone in the House of Woodcock. Day-Lewis’ skill is on full display as both a man intimately aware of his walls while stubbornly resolute in them, and finally noticing them being lapped at by love; just look at how Reynolds looks at Alma.

It’s Krieps is the one who does the unsung work of the film. Not only does her Alma have to stand up to Day-Lewis, she needs to be subtly working every scene as well. Her role is a fine-tuned, understated scene-serving that a movie like Phantom Thread requires. She needs to be opaque yet open for the audience’s projection—that’s what makes the final twist feel so crafty.

They’re backed, penned in, and monitored by Lesley Manville as Cyril Woodcock, who exudes respect, intimate knowledge, and disdain with a simple twitch. She is both a hard place and the safe harbor, and Manville gamely rises to the occasion.

Together, the odd throuple creates an alchemic reaction; a movie that feels entirely character based and utterly unconcerned with overt narrative. Its story seems simple, but the structure of it proves to be anything but. It is not just a tale of a tortured male genius abusing those around him, nor is it a tale of a quiet woman demuring to his vision, nor is it a tale of a stern sister chasing off a distraction for her talented brother.