A touch of glamour

The Dressmaker director Jocelyn Moorhouse on Sophie Theallet: "I met her because we are both good friends with Rupert Everett." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Loving Billy Wilder, watching Sunset Boulevard, an Audrey Hepburn Sabrina remodeling, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit and Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's The Pledge, Sergio Leone, Alice B Toklas in Paris, South Pacific, David and Albert Maysles' Grey Gardens, consulting with Sophie Theallet about Madeleine Vionnet and Cristóbal Balenciaga - Jocelyn Moorhouse and producer Sue Maslin revealed the underpinnings of The Dressmaker.

Kate Winslet as Tilly Dunnage: "We're entering a fable. Although the story, of course, is very truthful and universal."

Based on the novel by Rosalie Ham, screenplay PJ Hogan and Moorhouse, starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving with Sarah Snook, Kerry Fox (Alison Maclean's The Rehearsal), Gyton Grantley, Alison Whyte, Shane Bourne, and Barry Otto (Gracie Otto and Miranda Otto's dad), The Dressmaker convinces with the transformative quality of well-made clothes.

Kate Winslet's wild, stylish abandon gives revenge a new look and Judy Davis is funny, heartbreaking and marvelously absurd. The unpredictable and memory impaired mother/daughter coalition, takes on a town of enemies in an Australian spaghetti western with sequins as bullets and lace as its lasso.

Tilly Dunnage (Winslet) returns to the crusty desert town of Dungatar, where she spent the early years of her childhood. Using her couture training in Paris as her weapon, she cracks open the inhabitants' incrustation of gossip and posturing so that more and more of the local ladies start to parade around the dusty roads in silks and satins. Only her mother Molly (Davis) seems strangely immune to the lure of fine surfaces. She has seen too much, suffered too much to care. Yet, there is a secret to be uncovered and beans to be spilt.

Sue Maslin: "And then there is the celebration of the costuming. You're back into the bright films of Hollywood." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sarah Snook as small-town potato sack Gertrude goes through one of the year's best make-overs. Liam Hemsworth is hunky, well-meaning silo jumping, heartthrob Teddy. Pharmacist Dr. Almanac and schoolteacher Beulah, played with juicy venom by Barry Otto and Kerry Fox respectively, do their best to make life hell for the prodigal daughter upon her return to the place where traumatic memories are born.

Anne-Katrin Titze: I really like the arrival. Even before the arrival, the shot of the bus from above. Another species, like some beetle entering.

Jocelyn Moorhouse: Oh, I like that.

AKT: We are entering a different world. Is that what you were thinking?

JM: Yes, it was a very deliberate device to show that we were going into a strange world. I wanted the audience to know from the first frame that this story is not in the naturalistic world. We're entering a fable. Although the story, of course, is very truthful and universal, the storytelling is going to be unusual.

AKT: She [Tilly] arrives and she is a western hero saying "I'm back you bastards!" Then comes the Sergeant [Farrat portrayed by Hugo Weaving] who asks "Is that Dior?" So also, as far as gender is concerned, we are right away told, what you're expecting is not …

Judy Davis as Molly: "I just fell in love with her as a director. I just loved her through the camera."

JM: … Don't expect anything! You cannot predict what is going to happen. Nothing is as it seems. So just hang on and enjoy it.

AKT: They not only go and watch Sunset Boulevard, but there is also Gertrude's [Sarah Snook] fabulous transformation. I was thinking of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina.

JM: Yes, yes.

AKT: So, is Billy Wilder a bit of your guardian angel?

JM: Oh, I love Billy Wilder movies. He was one of the greats.

AKT: Did you think of him for scenes?

JM: Actually, funnily enough, Sunset Boulevard was in the book [by Rosalie Ham] It's a way of letting the audience know this is the Fifties. But of course it's also one of my favorite movies. I watched it probably 100 times. I was so delighted to put one of my favourite movies into my movie. It feels like an honour to have a bit of it in there.

Jocelyn Moorhouse on Sarah Snook as Gertrude with Tilly: "She's a real comedian. She changes posture, she holds her face differently."

Sue Maslin: You are quite right, though, to pick up on the genres. The clues are there right in the opening scene.

JM: It's a bit gothic.

SM: There's a bit of a spaghetti western and then it brings in the femme fatale, so there's a film noir thing going on as well. And then there is the celebration of the costuming. You're back into the bright films of Hollywood.

AKT: The costumes were by Sophie Theallet?

JM: Sophie was a consultant to me when I was researching what a couture designer does. I met her because we are both good friends with Rupert Everett. So it was just lucky. I worked with Rupert many years ago and we're still friends. So when I said, I'd really like to find a designer I could talk to about what it's like to be a couture artist …

AKT: To be somebody who would have studied with Madeleine Vionnet and Cristóbal Balenciaga.

JM: And she knew all of those references. We spent a lot of time together and she also spent some time with Kate [Winslet]. So that Kate could talk to someone who'd lived in France because Sophie grew up there. So she was very helpful in helping Kate and me understand Tilly's artistry, what her passion is. She gave me this line that I kept as a mantra through the whole movie. She said: "What you have to remember, Jocelyn, couture is a weapon!"

Hugo Weaving as Sergeant Farrat: "All the girls were wearing the corset. Even Sergeant Farrat was wearing the corset."

AKT: That's good. And there's the western again.

JM: That gave inspiration to the golf dress with the little tees that she pulls out. Weapon!

AKT: Tilly makes them look less like themselves and more like they want to look.

JM: Yes, that's what a couture stylist does. It's manipulation, transformation.

SM: She understands that that is going to be the key to unlock the information that she needs to find out what happened. And why she was sent away all those years ago. She is using it very very deliberately and playing on their vanities and their desire to outshine each other. Of course, they give her what she needs in order to piece it together and then get revenge.

AKT: And, of course, the clothes. They are so much more than just something to wear.

JM: Especially for women. We wear different things depending on the occasion or the situation. We clothe ourselves in different sorts of costumes our whole lives. We may not be aware of it but that's what we're doing. And we have different reasons for why we wear different things. Tilly knows that and empowers a lot of the women.

The Dressmaker US poster at the Crosby Street Hotel

AKT: The Gertrude transformation is really fantastic. It stuns audiences.

JM: That actress is pretty remarkable, Sarah Snook. She is quite beautiful, actually, but she knows how to make herself look plain. She's a real comedian. She changes posture, she holds her face differently. We talked about how she was going to be Gertrude in the beginning like a potato sack. And then she changed her posture. And with a bit of makeup and her hair's done right, and in couture - suddenly she's a princess. She's a swan.

AKT: Often in films this is clumsily, predictably done, not so here.

SM: Part of the artistry of the costume department is not just making the clothes but they hand made all the corsetry. In order to get the Fifties silhouette, you actually have to sit up straight. You wear this corsetry and instantly everything comes up and is straight.

JM: And you look different.

AKT: It is also a kind of armour.

JM: All the girls were wearing the corset. Even Sergeant Farrat was wearing the corset.

AKT: Did he like it?

JM: He did.

Coming up - Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit and Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's The Pledge, Sergio Leone, Alice B. Toklas in Paris, South Pacific, David and Albert Maysles' Grey Gardens with Jocelyn Moorhouse and Sue Maslin reuniting with Rosalie Ham.

The Dressmaker opens in the US on September 23.