The Dress

A summer dress is made, sold, worn and passed from hand to hand. The film follows it and steps briefly into the life of every person it reaches. The one it dwells on most is a train conductor who does not let go of the woman wearing it from the moment he sees the dress. Written, directed by and starring Alex van Warmerdam, the film moves in an odd register: comic in one scene, frightening in the next. The telling does not take being followed and harassed lightly; the conductor's behaviour is given as threatening rather than funny. The subject is a chain of coincidences turning around one object, but underneath it is what people do to one another. It is the work of one of the most distinctive directors in Dutch cinema.