The Dressmaker - Kate Winslet is stitched up in oddball revenge drama

The Toronto film festival wouldn’t be complete without an extended “what the hell was Kate Winslet thinking?” moment. In 2013, she brought Labor Day, a Mills & Boon melodrama about a woman kidnapped by a convict who helps her make peach pie, while last year saw her star as a French landscape gardener trapped in a laboured farce with Alan Rickman in the risible period comedy A Little Chaos. She’s come a long way from her reign as Oscar favourite, with one win and five nominations in the bag, and her latest oddity is taking her even further afield.

This time Winslet lands in the Australian outback in How to Make an American Quilt director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s adaptation of a novel by Rosalie Ham. She stars as dressmaker Mertyl ‘Tilly’ Dunnage, a woman returning to her isolated hometown after being accused of murder at a young age. Her arrival comes as a surprise to the townfolk, most of whom still despise her, but especially her mother Mad Molly, played by Judy Davis, who has become a hermit. Tilly intends to make amends with her but also teach the rest of the town a nasty lesson, while making them dresses ...

While the casting of Kate Winslet in a film set in the early 50s about a woman who makes dresses might make it sound like an overly polite and respectable Sunday night drama, the team behind The Dressmaker have something else in mind. Quite what that is remains a mystery. Perhaps even to them. The film is a tonally uneven, genre-shifting hurricane of a thing, wildly careering off the rails and smashing into everything in its view.

It plays like a manic cartoon. Every performance, every musical cue and every camera angle is dialled up to 11 with broad physical comedy taking preference over genuine wit and dialogue often drowned out in screeching. The plot encompases everything from child death to marital rape to domestic violence but always with a spring in its step, giving a lightness to dark material but without the smarts to make it sell as a black comedy. At times, amidst the often exhausting chaos on show, it also wants to be taken seriously, especially near the end with tragedy fitting in uneasily around the grisly mayhem.

The garish plot (described by the director as “Unforgiven with a sewing machine”) goes from one camp set-up to the next. One moment Winslet is destroying a rugby match by seductively taking her gloves off and minutes later, the parents of the child she might have killed are hiring a rival dressmaker to take her down. Winslet’s knack for making extravagant outfits also attracts the attention of the local policeman, played by Hugo Weaving. He happens to be a cross-dresser who squeals at the mere touch of a feather boa and brags about his own sartorial skills (“I’m brilliant with sequins”). It’s notably strange stuff.

We also have an age issue. Winslet is 39 but Tilly was classmates with a character played by Predestination star Sarah Snook who is 28. She also has a romance with a local played by Liam Hemsworth, who is 25, who remembers her before she left, even though he wouldn’t have been born then. Oh and her teacher is played by Kerry Fox, who is just 10 years older than Winslet in real life. While it’s nice to finally see the tables turned and to see a woman in a relationship with a younger man, it would be been a nice touch if it had made any actual sense.

There is some fun to be had however. Judy Davis, as Winslet’s feral mother, understands the insanity around her and delivers a fun, high-pitched performance while the fast-paced madness of the plot ensures a lack of boredom. It’s also hard to blame Winslet for seeking awards glory with this one - it’s too barmy to register. But ultimately, unlike the many dresses Tilly makes, it doesn’t hang well.

The Dressmaker fails to go far enough for it to be recommended as a gonzo curio but it’s not fashioned into anything else remotely palatable. It’s all dressed up and has too many places to go.