Retail Nightmare: A Trip Inside Peter Strickland’s Sensorium
Fear and desire lie at the heart of Peter Strickland’s cinema, whether he’s exploring those themes through the sonic, the sexual, the sartorial, or some diabolical combination of all three. With his masterful sense of film technique, the British director has developed a lavish style that merges the influence of such avant-garde titans as Stan Brakhage with the perverse pleasures of sensualist European art-house cinema of the seventies.
After growing up in Reading, England, and traveling to New York City in his twenties, Strickland first garnered international acclaim with Berberian Sound Studio (2012), an Italian-horror-inspired study of madness, and The Duke of Burgundy (2014), a kinky melodrama about the sexual power play between two women. His latest fantasia, In Fabric, is set in an unnerving facsimile of 1993 England and follows the story of a recently separated bank teller (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who looks for love in lonely-hearts newspaper ads. While treating herself at a frenzied January department-store sale, she buys a confidence-boosting dress, only to discover the garment is cursed to possess and destroy anyone who wears it.
Ahead of In Fabric’s opening at the Metrograph in New York, I talked with Strickland about how his strange visions have been influenced by his early experiences of bold repertory-film programming, his sensitivity to sound, and his childhood memories of shopping with his mother.