Paulina Lagundi Ulrich is a veteran director, having directed and produced several shorts as well as the feature, Mail Order Monster. This time out, she’s chosen a quiet and powerful subject. The short, Dress, follows two women as they putter around the house. The relationship between the two women is not at all clear. They look to be similar in age, so our first assumption is that they are roommates. But then their conversation raises doubts about this hypothesis.
The look of the film is striking. There’s a wonderful graininess to the picture that is reminiscent of films from the 80s. This is in keeping with the film’s theme of pulling the past along with us. Although we seem to be in Los Angeles or somewhere else in California where Spanish style architecture dominates, the colour palette is rich and warm. The lighting is soft and gives the film a very tender feeling.
We discover that one woman, Susan, played very charmingly by Tess Rianne Sullivan, is going on a date. There’s nothing particularly striking about this fact. But the other, Megan, played convincingly by Madeline Dennison, is annoyed. And she’s annoyed because, she hints, Susan hasn’t waited long enough after the death of her last partner. At this point, the audience’s mind starts working and trying to figure out what’s going on. Are these two mother and daughter? Sisters? The only thing that makes sense is that they are mother and daughter. But Susan, then, must have been a very young mother who retained her youthful looks remarkably well. Susan admits that her deceased husband wasn’t everything that Megan thought he was. Which is a line only a mother would be able to take with a child. Susan also makes a reference to The Sound of Music that goes right over Megan’s head. We get hints that the dead husband was a veteran. Did he die in war? We don’t know.
But the film, as the title suggests is really about a dress. Or perhaps about the process of getting dressed. Megan helps Susan with her makeup and helps her choose a dress. Susan doesn’t want the one that makes her look like a librarian. And the flowery one that Megan says will speak to her, doesn’t. The one she does end up picking is black and conservative.
What’s in a dress? They say the clothes make the man. The same principle might be at work here. Our clothes have a lot to do with how we see ourselves. And they way we see ourselves might be dramatically different than the way others see us. This film in fact reminded me quite strongly of the song “Lies” by the Canadian folk singer, Stan Rogers. In it, a woman looks in a mirror and worries about the lines that have formed around her eyes. But, then she thinks ahead to Friday when she’ll go out dancing with her husband, and,
“She’ll look up in that weathered face that loves hers line for line To see that maiden shining in his eyes And laugh at how her mirror tells her lies”
Having been married for some time now, I can attest that this is in fact exactly what happens. I always see my wife as the 22 year old I met on the bus on the way to school many years ago. With parents too, I think, we often see them as they were rather than as they are. Perhaps what we’re seeing in this film is how Susan looks to Megan or how Susan looks to herself. This is a wonderful way of presenting this trick of the brain, and its subjectivity. Human beings have a tendency to want time to freeze at certain moments and I don’t think it’s entirely possible to really see people we’ve known for a long time the way they actually appear. When we do catch glimpses of this reality, it’s usually accompanies by pangs of nostalgia. The passing of time grates on us. Here we see this problem represented visually in a touching and powerful way.
But, as we learn, Susan is not content to live in the past. No matter how much time has passed, she’s determined to continue living.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.