Abstract
The Dressmaker (2015), directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, opens with a bus travelling through an expansive, dry landscape dominated by wheat fields. On arrival, the film’s protagonist, Myrtle ‘Tilly’ Dunnage (played by Kate Winslet), steps off to the dingy evening streets of the Australian country town of her childhood, Dungatar. A long establishing high-angle shot frames Tilly in her ‘Dior-inspired’ dress, white satin gloves and hat, with accompanying soft amber curls falling at her neck. The camera shifts to a medium profile shot as her gloved hand places a shiny wooden box etched with the word ‘Singer’ on the ground. Ominous music accompanies close-ups of Tilly’s face as she stares down the town high street. The camera momentarily lingers on the signs above three shops (Pratt’s General Store, E. Pettyman Stock and Station Agent, and Chemist Proprietor: P. Almanac) intercut with Tilly extracting a cigarette from a silver case, lighting it and exhaling a puff of smoke before announcing, ‘I’m back, you bastards.’ Viewers then learn that Tilly is determined to discover the reasons why she was removed from the town as a child, reasons which evidence the town’s systemic culture of gendered abuse and marginalization of people who do not conform to societal norms. This opening, like the film as a whole, stitches together, while cutting across, conventions from various film genres (the western, romance, mystery, comedy, drama), transforming them to offer an alternative representation of gender, opening the film to feminist readings....
