Variety: The tailoring is more consistent than the storytelling in “The Dressmaker,” an appreciably deranged tale of small-town intrigue that finds Australian filmmaker Jocelyn Moorhouse returning quite literally with a vengeance after a nearly 20-year absence from the director’s chair. Starring Kate Winslet as a spirited 1950s haute-couturist who decides it’s time to return to her miserable hometown and give the place a little color (mostly red), this insistently quirky comedy-thriller-mystery-horror -revenge saga serves up an ugly human menagerie of ghouls and grotesques — every one of them contributing a different patch to a crazy quilt of murder, adultery, repression and madness. A work of shrill, campy excess as well as some pretty choice acting (especially from the always-welcome Judy Davis in a spry supporting role), Moorhouse’s adaptation of Rosalie Ham’s 2000 novel may lead audiences to expect a primmer, more well-behaved movie based on its title alone, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have them in stitches.
Comingsoon
Learn more about the Makeup Oscar finalists now! Seven films remain in competition in the Makeup and Hairstyling category for the 89th Academy Awards.
MTV
The Dressmaker, starring Kate Winslet as an estranged beauty who returns home to nurse her sick mother in 1950s rural Australia, sounds like a pedigreed slog, the kind of Oscar contender with sobs and screams underneath a hot sun. Oh, hell no.
New York Daily News
"The Dressmaker" is only sew-sew.
True, the film has some designer names — the always terrific Kate Winslet, as the vengeful seamstress of the title, and the hunky Liam Hemsworth, as a raunchy bit of material she finds Down Under.
