One of the most grindingly difficult obstacles to being in a functional and happy relationship is also one that appears to be deceptively simple: figuring out how to share your life with someone you love. Once the initial, doe-eyed stages of courtship are over, there’s a subtle choreography required to interlink two disparate lives. When you’re intoxicated with romance, this can feel like a thrilling process, laying the groundwork for a life of intimacy, saying goodbye to the loneliness that came before. But then the daily, unexpected micro-negotiations begin, an intricately challenging procession of compromises, and suddenly the shared road ahead can feel intimidatingly steep.



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In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar contender Phantom Thread, the brutality of this is explored in all its jagged splendour with ghoulish humour, unflinching honesty and ultimately, surprising tenderness. It’s a film that manages to feel both artfully pristine and horribly messy, the exquisite production design a deceptive shell for two hours of uncomfortable truths, a relationship drama that will prove frightfully perceptive to anyone willing to look past the fittings and deep into the stitching of their own dating history.



Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an uncompromising talent. He designs show-stopping dresses for the elite women of London, working alongside his brittle sister Cyril (Lesley Manville). His work is his life, consuming and often overwhelming, a creative outpour leaving him empty, resorting to the countryside for recuperation. On one particular excursion he encounters Alma (relative unknown Vicky Krieps), a waitress whose striking looks betray a crippling lack of confidence. The pair connect instantly and the process begins.

There’s a level of technical craftsmanship alone that makes Phantom Thread an inarguable Oscar frontrunner, from Jonny Greenwood’s wondrous score to Anderson’s own swoon-worthy, and uncredited, cinematography. But there are also many joys carefully woven within the fabric that might take repeat viewings to appreciate fully.

Anderson presents us with characters, and a situation, we think we can predict. The obsessive and controlling artist pitted against the vulnerable and naive muse with a sinister, Mrs Danvers-esque antagonist thrown in for good measure. But while certain tropes may recall older, similarly themed works, our preconceptions gradually unravel as his script contorts into something thrillingly new, wonderfully female and fascinatingly dangerous.

Reynolds is a well-coiffed man-child stuck in a privileged, yet stultifying, routine. He justifies his petty brattishness with his impressive creative prowess while his slick exterior hides an emotional immaturity. His “confirmed bachelor” status has turned him into an intolerant and impatient monster, yet one who’s awfully familiar for anyone who’s still found themselves single and dating into their 30s and beyond. It’s all too easy to identify with the often unhealthy barriers erected to protect one’s self and the difficulty faced when someone tries to subtly shake up a stubbornly maintained lifestyle.

What initially attracts him to Alma is her physicality but also something far deeper, a misperceived submissiveness that he believes will fit smoothly into the life he has spent time and effort to construct. But like Reynolds, Alma is not the character we expected. Both she and Cyril are challenging, powerful women who, through their very different ways, try to stage-manage the diva they both love.

When cracks appear, when Alma refuses to play the role he has written for her, he sulks and whines (the theory that this film in any way glamorizes the creative male genius is questionable) and this rift crescendoes in quite spectacular fashion. It’s a film littered with unforeseen humour, a strange romantic comedy of sorts, acting as a sharp-tongued British cousin to Anderson’s whimsical 2003 oddity Punch-Drunk Love, yet even during the lighter moments, it stings and bruises, all too aware of the considerable pain that lies behind trying to make someone fall back in love with you.

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After suffering through Reynolds’ impetuous attitude and cruel chilliness for far too long, she poisons his tea, thrusting him into a position of vulnerability and back into her arms. Too many think-pieces have viewed this act through literal eyes, outraged at what’s seen as abuse, unwilling to view the ultimate arrangement for what it really represents: the importance of compromise. During the second poisoning, figuring out exactly what she’s cooking up, Reynolds decides to tuck in anyway and as the soundtrack swells with their embrace, it becomes a moment of unlikely, woozy romance.

For me, it was a scene not about psychopathy or some cocktail of Munchausen by proxy and Stockholm syndrome but about the importance of coming to terms with one’s harshest faults in order to save an ailing relationship, albeit played out via an absurdist narrative device. It’s an unvarnished view of the reality behind love, the ongoing, sometimes head-smashingly difficult maintenance required to stay with someone. Alma and Reynolds have found a way to make it work, imperfect sure, and to others, sickeningly perverse but wouldn’t the rules of anyone’s relationship seem strange when studied under a microscope for others to judge?

The Academy is unlikely to reward such an odd and divisive film (its six nominations were a shock in the first place) but, to quote Reynolds, “I think it’s the expectations and assumptions of others that cause heartache”. Phantom Thread’s proudly unfettered outlook on love doesn’t require the approval of others.