Disappointing. Starting off for the first hour of its two-hour runtime, this film follows a beleaguered divorcee as she encounters misfortunate after misfortune after purchasing a red dress. So far, so good: the cinematigraphy is excellent, and the whole thing is produced very well in the style of what might have been a good horror movie in the early 70s… think “Rosemary’s Baby” but with a more Giallo, surreal edge. The whole thing is faintly artsy, but in a skilled and knowing way that works enjoyably…
…until it doesn’t. About halfway through the movie they abandon any kind of linear narrative, or at least fail to convey the story as well, as the star of the first half of the movie is abruptly killed off and it switches to a sequence of other characters who inherit the dress. It sinks into disjointed artsiness and never recovers, seemingly abandoning plot completely in favor of weirdness, making the second half an increasingly tedious slog and squandering the immense goodwill it built up with me for the first hour.
And it was doing so very well for a little while there. Disappointing.