Comic Satire ‘The Dress’ Fits Modern Society Well

With “The Dress,” Alex van Warmerdam follows a garment as it passes from one person to another as a way for plugging into the free-floating frustration and anger that permeate contemporary multicultural society.

Adding paranoia, racism, sex and the perverse workings of coincidence and pure chance to the mix, the Dutch director comes up with a sophisticated, darkly hilarious satire on the enduring absurdity of the human condition. “The Dress” would be welcome any time of the year, but it’s just the ticket to chase away any lingering post-holiday doldrums.

Even the distinctive design of the dress’ fabric emerges from an ugly and violent racial incident. A hapless fabric designer, dumped on by his girlfriend and told by a garment manufacturer that his designs, representing four months’ work, are lousy, has only a week to save his commission. Peering out his window to observe a heated clash between blue-collar workers and his Indian neighbors over their native music, he notices the wife’s sari, which features bold red-orange leaves on a bright blue background.

He copies it immediately. The garment manufacturer is pleased, forgetting that he had wanted pastels for spring, declaring it “optimistic” in feeling. (There’s an entire subplot involving the dire fate of the employee, played by Henri Garcin, who gets in a fight with the garment manufacturer over his dislike of the striking design.)

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The next thing we know, an older couple is stopping at a shop window to look at a dress made of the fabric. The husband (Rijk de Gooyer) thinks it’s too youthful for his wife (Elisabeth Hoijtink), who buys it anyway. It lifts her spirits.

We realize how devoted the two are when tragedy strikes--and the dress floats away, landing in the countryside, where it comes into the possession of a pretty housekeeper (Ariane Schluter) at an elegant mansion. Wouldn’t you know that while wearing it, both she and its next owner, a beautiful teenager (Ricky Koole), arouse the passions of a train ticket-taker (Warmerdam himself) whose loneliness, stronger than even his sexual longings, takes on increasingly scary implications?

Warmerdam effortlessly sustains the antic madness he generates, although he might have wound up his fable a tad more swiftly. His observations of human behavior--not confined to always-vulnerable bourgeois propriety--are consistently sharp and funny, and his cast is a marvel. “The Dress” is sure to wear well.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes considerable violence, although in a comic context, strong language, some nudity.

‘The Dress’

Alex van Warmerdam: De Smet

Ariane Schluter: Johanna

Ricky Koole: Chantalle

Henri Garcin: Van Tilt

An Attitude Films release of a Graniet Film production. Writer-director Alex van Warmerdam. Producers Marc van Warmerdam, Tom Schippers, Alex van Warmerdam. Executive producer Patricia McMahon. Cinematographer Marc Felperlaan. Editor Rene Wiegmans. Costumes Leonie Polak. Music Vincent van Warmerdam. Art directors Jelier & Schaaf. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.