Vicky Krieps – Memphis Flyer

“What movie did you see?” asked my friend Sarah.

“Old,” I said. “The new M. Night Shyamalan.”

“Oh. How was it?”

“Meh. I didn’t hate it,” I said.

“Wow. That’s quite an endorsement, coming from you!” she said.

It’s true. I’m on record as not being a Shyamalan fan. More precisely, I hate his movies. It’s not personal. I’m sure he is a lovely person who is kind to animals. And I respect his skills. It’s obvious from even the most cursory examination of films like The Village and Signs that this is a guy who has memorized every frame Alfred Hitchcock ever shot. It’s just that he’s terribly one note, and not nearly the writer a generation of producers seem to think he is. After hitting with The Sixth Sense, he’s leaned on his signature gimmick of the late-film plot twist. Take The Happening, for example, where he sets up a high concept premise, treads water for an hour, then belly flops when he tries to resolve it cleverly.

(While I’m busy pissing cinephiles off, I recently watched the Turner Classic Movies tribute to another Hitch worshipper, Brian de Palma, and decided he’s also a hack.)

Anyway, Old is Shyamalan’s return to the theaters after two box office successes, Split and Glass. You’ve got to admire the commitment to short titles. Old starts with a young family heading to a beach vacation at the all-inclusive Anamika Resort on an island off the coast of Mexico. The marriage of the not very creatively named Guy (Gael García Bernal) and Prisca (Vicky Krieps) is on the rocks. They’re trying to keep it from their son Trent (played at this point by Nolan River) and daughter Maddox (Alexa Swinton, initially), but they’re not doing a very good job. When Trent plays with his action figures, they argue like mom and dad.

The hotel, though, is super nice, and the staff so attentive that they seem to know everything about their guests. Kinda spooky, right? It gets spookier: The resort manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) has the same energy as that guy in the Chevy commercials who plays sinister pranks on unsuspecting consumers. (“We’ve kidnapped your family to highlight all the features you’re going to love on our all-new Chevy Abductor crossover SUV.”) The manager offers to transport the family to a secret, secluded beach where nothing bad can happen.

Spoiler alert: Bad things happen.

Nolan River is one of four actors who play Trent at various ages in *Old*.

Once at the beach, Guy (is that a placeholder name that stuck?) and Prisca (was she once called “Girl?”) discover they’re not the only ones invited to this “exclusive” deserted beach. There’s also Charles (Rufus Sewell), a doctor; his wife Chrystal (Abbey Lee); daughter Kara (played at age 11 by Mikaya Fisher); and mother Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant). Lurking on a beach is a guy who Maddox recognizes as a rapper named— I kid you not — Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre). They soon find that they’re trapped on the beach, and aging at an unnaturally fast rate.

Aaron Pierre plays a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan. No, seriously.

In the big picture of horror movie settings to get trapped in with a group of disposable characters, of which you might be one, I’d say a secluded beach is probably the best you could hope for. Usually, it’s a haunted mansion or a deserted farmhouse surrounded by zombies or an eastern European hostel with a secret basement torture chamber. I have to admit, as Shyamalan went through his usual paces of stilted dialogue and obvious, studio-note exposition, I occasionally zoned out and just watched cinematographer Mike Gioulakis’ vibrant images of the surf rolling in.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t gag my way through Old. Or maybe it’s because the premise is taken from one of my favorite Ray Bradbury short stories, “Frost and Fire,” in which survivors of a spaceship crash discover that the alien planet’s radiation ages them a lifetime in only eight days, and it takes generations to effect an escape. Or maybe I’m just starved for entertainment.

Old never rises to Bradbury’s plane of contemplation, but at least it tries to explore the psychic side of aging as the ultimate body horror. Unlike, say, being dismembered at summer camp or transforming into a giant man-fly, it’s a horror scenario we will all face — if we’re lucky.

Early in the 2015 documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Cobain’s aunt Mary says offhandedly, “I’m glad I wasn’t born with the genius brain.”

Artists, scientists, inventors, and creatives of all sorts have a long history of struggling to fit in. Maybe because their creative drive, rooted in a need for novelty, renders them allergic to the ordinary world. To do your best work, sometimes you have to put the world at arm’s length and follow your muse where it leads you. But for those stuck in the ordinary world, this can be very irritating.

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) definitely has the genius brain. His House of Woodcock is the best and most prestigious haute couture establishment in postwar London. His clients include the rich, famous, and royal. His fangirls tell him they want to be buried in one of his dresses. Reynolds was taught his trade by his mother, whom he and his spinster sister Cyrill (Lesley Manville) idolize long after her death. Cyrill acts as a kind of gatekeeper and manager to Reynolds. The attention to detail that has brought him fame and fortune comes with a side order of obsessive compulsive disorder. Reynolds is the human incarnation of the word “persnickety.”

Woodcock has had a string of girlfriends who he keeps around until he tires of them and Cyrill runs them off. One day, he’s having breakfast at a quaint restaurant near his country home when he sees a beautiful waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps). He asks her out in a most unusual way, and soon she is living with him and Cyrill. Their relationship eventually evolves into a three-way battle of wills, with Alma striving to get closer to Woodcock, while Cyrill tries to maintain her grip on her brother.

Daniel Day-Lewis (left) and Vicky Krieps tangle their lives in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film about fashion and passion, Phantom Thread.

Phantom Thread is writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s eighth film, and if there’s one thing you can say about Anderson’s career, it is that he never does the same thing twice. Another thing you can say about Anderson is that his work can be divisive. Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood enjoyed near universal acclaim, but as for Magnolia, The Master, and his last film, Inherent Vice, well, you either love them or you hate them. Personally, I loved Inherent Vice, which puts me in the minority, and I can’t stand Punch Drunk Love, which alienates me further. So, for me, Anderson is hit or miss.

Day-Lewis, who earned a Best Actor Academy Award in There Will Be Blood, is pretty brilliant as Reynolds, the kind of guy who wears a blazer and vest over his pajamas. He cannot be satisfied, even by success. The day before a beautifully sewn royal wedding dress is to be shipped off he declares it “ugly.” His relationship with Alma plumbs new depths of passive aggression. But Alma gives as good as she gets, and maybe since she is the first person to ever stand up to him, he can’t let her go, even when their affair becomes life threatening.

As usual with Anderson’s work, the cinematography is meticulous and excellent. Alma and Reynolds’ love story is exceedingly chaste, which is remarkable given that the director is most famous for his ode to the pornography industry. The porn urge is redirected toward the clothes, with loving closeups of lace and sewing fingers. The most erotic it gets is a measuring session that borders on the sadomasochistic. The film’s deep obsession with accoutrement reminded me strongly of the work of Memphis director Brian Pera, while the claustrophobic atmosphere of social obligation and niceties lends a strong Barry Lyndon vibe.

Perhaps Phantom Thread is best understood as the director coming to grips with his own genius brain. It’s probably too simplistic to say Reynolds is a stand in for Anderson’s perfectionism, but the director clearly sympathizes with him. What makes this film stand out is that he also sympathizes strongly with Alma. In this “Me Too” moment, it seems that the myth of the Byronic, bad boy artist is crumbling, and that’s probably for the best. Lewis, who says he’s retiring from acting after this film, will grab all of the attention, but it’s Alma’s fight to bring Reynolds back into the real world that will resonate.