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In this tale of a dress that flows from woman to woman via secondhand shops, theft, and more creative means, nothing much good happens to anyone that encounters it. And yet, we enjoy watching their misery, be it robbery, attempted rape, attempted murder, or freezing to death and subsequent incineration.
It sounds bleak, and it's a black comedy to be sure, but somehow writer/director Alex van Warmerdam milks the humor out of every situation. How is rape and a man shooting at a naked woman in his yard amusing? I can't really explain it, but it is. You just have to watch it and you'll (hopefully) understand.
In an interesting spin, the film doesn't actually begin with the dress, it begins with its creation, as a morose man presents patterns to his boss, one of which will be chosen for mass production into a garment. It's stamped out, hemmed, and shipped off to a store where we watch passers-by ogle it as it rests on a mannequin. Who will be the first woman to wear the dress? The sense of foreboding -- as potential buyers examine it, then move along, until one bites -- is as thrilling as anything in any horror movie.
Some of The Dress's vignettes are overly mean, some don't work, and some don't translate well from German, but on the whole this is a very wry and fun little film. Give it a shot.
Aka De Jurk.
