With IN FABRIC, Peter Strickland is back with more great ideas but only so-so follow-through

Offhand I can't think of another current filmmaker whose movies combine exotic erotica and creepy behavior in any more memorable fashion than those Peter Strickland. His Berberian Sound Studio combined audio for a giallo movie with an all-out dissolution of character; The Duke of Burgundy offered S&M, butterflies and the very bizarre world of all women; and now IN FABRIC he gives us a sexy red dress that tortures and then murders its wearers, and perhaps the hottest and most perverse sex scene of the decade, involving a nude and prone mannequin. You aficionados are hooked already, right?

Fair enough, but be warned: You'll have to put up with Mr. Strickland's (the filmmaker is shown at left) predilection for very slow pacing and some tiresome repetition.

Here, in fact, he has the naughty dress pull a series of nasty stunts on its first victim (which turns out to actually be its second), and then he parades this same series all over again with victims number three and four. Please.

A genuinely sophisticated filmmaker would know better and do things a little differently. And yet Strickland sure can thrill us with his inclusion of gorgeous, outre sets; creepy ideas; and sexual stunts.

The "fashion" shop (above) in which much of the movie takes place is a wonder of glossy, gleaming 1930s and 1950s off-kilter glamor, complete with that old-fashioned and fun pneumatic tubing used in the department stores of yore.

Visually the movie is mostly a treat, as you'll have expected if your seen the filmmaker's other work. He also casts his leading characters well: Borgen's Sidse Babett Knudsen in Burgundy, Toby Jones (giving a terrific performance) in Berberian. Here, he uses Secrets and Lies' Marianne Jean- Baptiste (above), and she proves as watchable as ever as a newly single mom put upon by her employers, her shit-ass son (the very hot Jaygann Ayeh, below), his callow girlfriend, and now this homicidal dress.

Strickland's film makes yet another pass at indicting our increasingly dumbed-down consumer culture (Dawn of the Dead did it earlier and 2016's Nocturama one hell of a lot more stylishly), and has at least, in that dress idea, come up with an original-though-not-terribly-interesting "villain." He also does a little indicting of bankers and banks, via mom's sleazy/screwball employers, personified by (below, left and right respectively) Steve Oram and Julian Barratt.

The writer/director also casts his supporting roles well, and each is performed with the requisite relish. That's Gwendoline Christie, below, receiving some oral pleasure from her aforementioned hot boyfriend, as mom watches with, hmmmm, a combination of pleasure and envy (yes, another perverse and over-the-top sex scene).

The film's next round of victims, an about-to-be-married couple, are played with nice comic brio by Leo Bill (below, relentlessly fucking) and Hayley Squires (beneath and putting up with it). These two, who appear maybe halfway along, add some needed humor to the proceedings.

In a most interesting casting coup, the aforementioned Sidse Babbet Knudsen (below) appears in the film as the dress' initial victim, seen only via newspaper and catalog ads -- which leads TrustMovies to suspect that this noteworthy actress may have had a much larger role, one that might now be on what we used to call (pre-videocam films) the cutting room floor.

As it is, the film is already two (too-lengthy) hours long, and more, no matter how good Ms Knudsen might have been -- see Borgen to lean just how good she can be -- would have been a surfeit indeed. Overall, there is plenty here for film buffs to savor but not, I think, for more mainstream moviegoers, even those who claim to love comic horror films, which In Fabric pretty much/sort of is.

From A24, the movie opens this Friday, December 6, in limited release, in 25 venues -- from New York to Orlando, L.A., DC, and elsewhere across the country. (Shown above is the impressive actress Fatma Mohamed, who plays, perhaps quite literally, the saleslady from hell.)

Transgender time again in Rebekah Fortune's excellent (for awhile) example, JUST CHARLIE

What's to become of a young boy who's very good at soccer and who secretly and with all his/her heart wants to be a girl. You'll find out when you view the new British indie film, JUST CHARLIE, written by Peter Machen and directed by Rebekah Fortune, which, for quite awhile and quite well, explores the difficulties -- family/school/ friends/sports-related -- of someone going through this kind of heavy-duty trauma in which the recipient of one sex knows with every breath that it ought to have been the other.

Ms Fortune (shown at left) and Mr. Machen have done their research but know enough to bury all that within a screenplay that very specifically and cleverly creates a believable world around its main character, the titular Charlie, played with a lovely generosity and sweetness that never curdles by Harry Gilby, shown below.

So believable, in fact, are young Mr. Gilby and all the characters who surround him that the movie, for most of its length, is an easy one to appreciate and admire.

Gilby is pretty enough of face but also a whiz on the soccer field, so much so that he has been chosen to audition for training in the big league. But this gender identity thing grows ever more important and imminent. (That's he in his male attire above, with dad -- played by Scot Williams -- and his soon-to-be female version, below.)

Once the cat is out of the bag for his family, sides are taken, which occurs in school as well. Friends are lost , not just for Charlie but for his family members, too, and all this is handled with surprising truthfulness and precision. So much so, in fact, that we feel the pain, not just of Charlie herself, but that of her family and even some of the friends who are no longer so friendly.

This is all the the movie's credit, and it makes the film seem more real that many of its ilk in which coincidence and the need for a happy ending trump all else.  But then maybe a quarter hour or so from its ending, Just Charlie suddenly changes course, as an angry family member returns too easily to the fold, a florid melodramatic beating takes place (that ought to have put our heroine into a coma) followed by a (sort of) surprise bit of feel-good nonsense.

This is all too bad, for had the film been willing to continue on its small-steps course, it might have been a game changer of sorts. So if you do decide to view Just Charlie, make certain you also see A Fantastic Woman, if only for some ballast.

From Wolfe Video and running 99 minutes, the movie hit the street on DVD and streaming earlier this week -- for purchase and/or rental.

On-Demand: Paul King's one of-a-kind delight BUNNY AND THE BULL

Who'd have imagined that the sad tale of an agorophobic young man and his memories of "outside" could be brought to the screen with enough charm, humor, style and originality to fill a dozen more movies yet without ever once going over the top? Paul King, below left, that's who. And if you haven't heard the name before, you certainly will, once word of his little diamond-in-the-not-so-rough, BUNNY AND THE BULL, reaches the movie-going public. Right now, the only way to view it is via IFC Midnight series, where it began screening this month and will be available On-Demand until October 7. So grab your remote and click away for one of the most inventive movie experiences to be had in a long time.

July is proving to be IFC's best on-demand month -- for TrustMovie's money, at least. What with the thrilling sci-fi/mystery Exam heating up audiences and now King's little delight, it's a can't-miss month for viewers of IFC, the company that is currently presenting about many good foreign and independent films as can be found under one roof anywhere in these United States.

What makes Bunny and the Bull (hereafter to be referred to as B&TB) so special, is its drop-dead different look.

While it appears that nearly everything here was acted against a green screen, instead of getting some of that deadly "stylish" and inert appearance we remember from Kerry Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we're treated to a full-out barrage of inventive effects: backdrops that are drawn, modeled (of clay, metal, glass. fabric and who knows what else) and otherwise created from what I'd call "real imagination." Scene after scene is delightfully different.

BATB offers up its own little world, and it's like little else you've experienced.  Its story, not bad at all, concerns our hero Stephen (played with a lot of fear and loathing, by Edward Hogg, shown near right) and his best friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby, far right and below, who's done mostly Brit TV).  The latter, a blond doofus -- think a sexier Will Ferrell -- complete with endless tips on horse racing, tries everything to get his friend out of the house.  Once there, the adventures begin in earnest.

The pair connect early on with a cute and spunky Spaniard (Verónica Echegui, below, who was so wonderful in My Prison Yard, part of the 2008 FSLC Spanish Cinema Now series), and various combinations of love, lust and friendship bloom. All this is edited with panache (by Mark Everson) and kept on a lickety-split time-frame by Mr King's storytelling skills. You'll know that something bad happened to poor Stephen, but you'll also have so much fun on this oddball journey that you won't spend much time worrying about it.  The puzzle pieces begin to come together eventually, with the final ones appearing only at the end -- just in time to goose the film into the stratosphere with some genuine emotion and maybe even a tear of two.

Along the way we get some nice surprises -- Sylvia Syms! Dog milk! Full-frontal! The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade! -- plus some fancy stories-within-stories and a scene set in an amusement park that is so creative and lovely that I shall remember it for all time. The film's humor is often sexual, sometimes crass but always funny. Which is all quite appropriate, given the characters here and what is really going on in the film.  If I haven't convinced you by now to fork over the five (or is it six?) bucks for On-Demand (does it depend on what part of the country you live?), then you can wait months and then maybe rent the DVD from Blockbuster, of which I am not fond but with which IFC seems to have formed an exclusive devil-pact. Sigh. Or you might wait until the day that Netflix gets access to the film.  But who knows when that'll be. We're still waiting for NF to get the rights to send us Pontypool.

DVDebut: Don't miss Malcolm Venville's sleeper 44 INCH CHEST

When Sexy Beast appeared a decade back, and the raves -- mostly for Ben Kingsley's over-
the-top performance -- started coming, it was perhaps too easy to overlook the supporting work of actors Ray Winstone and Ian McShane and the screen-
writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto. Now, a relatively new director to movies named Malcolm Venville (shown below), with his first full-length film 44 INCH CHEST, also written by Mellis and Scinto, takes us back to what initially looks like the mob milieu of Sexy Beast but is actually a much more sophisticated and surprising location: the human mind, body and soul.

This interior/exterior belongs to another criminal type, a fellow named Colin Diamond,  played by Mr. Winstone.  He is this time surrounded by a pack of pals that include McShane (again), joined by Tom Wilkinson, Stephen Dillane and John Hurt. Male ensembles don't get much better than this, and the cast delivers every juicy line of dialog, every smile, frown and curse, as though we'd never seen nor heard a bit of it until now.  The story  involves Colin's wife, who has just told him she must leave him for another man.  Winstone runs the gamut in the next few moments.  And then all hell breaks loose.

As TrustMovies recalls (having read a portion of some of the reviews at the time of the film's limited release: mid-January 2010), mention was made of Sexy Beast and of the plot outline and the vicious and bloody goings-on, with the critical assessment more thumbs down than up and box-office results following suit. (Films like this need critical boosting if they are to take off at all.   Even then, few do.)  Now that TM has finally seen the film, he's mildly appalled at the misapprehension of what is basically a psychological love/hate story about a rather typical British gangster-type upended and then redeemed by coming to terms with his situation and feelings.

Mr. Venville and his writers flash back and forth -- not only between then and now but between reality and fantasy.  The consistency is maintained via the actors, all of whom nail their characters and maintain their through-line, thus holding the film together quite well and allowing its audience to know where we are at any time.  This also enables us to forgive what could be some difficult-to-believe moments, such as a kidnapping in a restaurant (the beginning of which is shown above, with Misters Hurt and McShane) that proves as funny as it is scary.

Just how much of the film is fantasy and how much reality is never quite clear, nor does it need to be.  The whole thing -- once the event that sets the plot in motion is established -- could be going on only in the mind of our protagonist.  Still, fantasy or reality, the movie needs to be brought to life, and here Venville and his cast deliver in spades.  As the wife, Joanne Whalley (above), an actress we see far too seldom anymore, is as alluring as ever.  Even with an added decade and little more weight, she's still a knockout: sexy, gorgeous and able to command the screen whenever she appears.  (When will they transfer to DVD one of this woman's great early films, the British TV piece Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  What a wonderful work that is!)

And as her new paramour, French actor Melvil Poupaud (shown above, left, with Mr Winstone), without (unless I'm mistaken) one word of dialog, is still impressive.  You root for him against all hope.  The rest of that cast is splendid.  Hurt, as a homophobic but sexless senior has some of the saltiest dialog heard in ages ("cunt" is tossed about more often here than I can remember, and each rendition outdoes the last); Wilkinson, who takes good care of his aging mum, adds yet another wonderful character to his gallery of them; Dillane, the youngest and best-looking of the bunch, makes prime use of this, leaving us always a tad off-balance; and McShane -- as an unapologetic gay who's always on the make -- is a delight.

Yet it's Winstone, with the help of the writers and director, who holds it all together, and he gives perhaps his most memorable performance.  Even if this is all some kind of fantasy, if one can fantasize redemption -- if one can imagine it -- then it must be possible, no? I think the placing of a bloody, wounded hand upon the head of our "hero," in an act of love or grace, somehow guarantees this.  See what you make of it; in fact, see what you make of this whole chilling, funny, sad thing.

Don't miss the DVD extra in which the director talks about the film. Mr. Venville is one of the least full-of-himself filmmakers I have witnessed, and everything he has to say here rings true and is extremely interesting.  Out this week on DVD, 44 Inch Chest has proven my biggest and most pleasurable surprise of the year so far.  As you can probably tell, I heartily recommend it.