Women’s Tales #3
The Woman Dress
The Woman Dress
by Giada Colagrande
The film stars Italian actress Maya Sansa and is set to a haunting soundtrack, written especially for the film by electronic pop trio Au Revoir Simone.
Following The Powder Room – Zoe Cassavetes’ dreamy story of opulence and glamour, and MUTA – Lucrecia Martel’s film noir filled with mutant fashion divas – The Woman Dress is again set in an all-female world of glamour and desire. But this time fashion obsession is taken to its most extreme conclusion, in a metaphysical tale of transcendence and ritual.
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A coven of elegant witches attends a bubbling cauldron, their shadowy cavern hung with the ghosts of dresses. Maya Sansa is undressed and led to a bath, and her finger pricked to draw blood. The witches – played by Heather D’Angelo, Erika Forster and Annie Hart of Au Revoir Simone – circle, chanting in strange tongues. As the smoke clears we see Maya Sansa has made the ultimate sacrifice, transforming herself into the object of her desire – a beautiful blood red dress
The film, featuring key dresses from Miu Miu, draws on a surreal cinematic language, with its red velvet curtain, reverse-speak and dreamlike mise-en-scène.
