Rating :   73/100                                                                     118 Min       

‘The Dressmaker’ stars Kate Winslet as Tilly Dunnage, returning to her small hometown in rural Australia in 1950 to greet the hics that forced her to leave in the first place, after she was accused of murdering a young boy when she herself was a child: only now she possesses god-like haute couture abilities that will see them falling over themselves for the use of her craft, whilst she determines to try and piece together what actually happened all those years ago and make amends with her slightly dotty mother in the process, played quite wonderfully by Judy Davis.

It’s a black comedy with moments of drama (sixty/forty in favour of the former) based on Rosalie Ham’s 2000 debut novel of the same name and adapted by Australian director and screenwriter Jocelyn Moorhouse, who has managed to bring to life the characters as skilfully and colourfully as she’s displayed the resplendent and juxtaposed myriad dresses that Tilly churns out from her austere shack overlooking the corrugated roofs of her outback town, and although the two genre strands are similarly clashed at times, the movie still works really well overall.

Equally vibrant support work all round from the likes of Liam Hemsworth and Sarah Snook but especially so from Hugo Weaving (interestingly, whilst filming it was Snook who actually informed Winslet of the auditioning for ‘Steve Jobs‘), with Winslet not only as great in the role of the protagonist as we’ve come to expect her to regularly be, but she’s also rarely sizzled more seductively on the big-screen as she does here.