The Dressmaker (2015) on Netflix
Blamed at ten for a classmate's death, Myrtle Dunnage is sent away from Dungatar. Twenty-five years on she returns as Tilly, a trained dressmaker, to a mother who does not remember her.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.0/1071,546 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes58%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1926, in the Victorian outback, the schoolgirl Myrtle Dunnage is blamed when a classmate, Stewart Pettyman, dies, and the policeman Sergeant Horatio Farrat has her sent out of Dungatar. She returns twenty-five years later as Tilly, a dressmaker schooled in couture who remembers nothing of that day, to her mother Molly, who is mentally ill, lives in squalor and does not know her. At the football final the home players are distracted by Tilly's red dress, so she changes into black, and the visiting side from Winyerp loses its focus instead, giving Dungatar the win. Gertrude Pratt asks Tilly for a dress for the footballers' dance, after which the town's women commission gowns from her, and Teddy McSwiney courts her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Dressmaker (2015)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rosalie Ham said she had ten offers on the table within weeks of her novel's release and even wrote a screenplay, but the project never took off. Producer Sue Maslin, who had missed out on the rights, later reconnected with Ham, whom she had not seen in 30 years since boarding school, and optioned the novel in 2009.
- Elizabeth Debicki dropped out of the film to play the lead in The Kettering Incident and was replaced by Sacha Horler, while Isla Fisher left the project because of pregnancy and was replaced by Sarah Snook.
- Producer Sue Maslin said they drove around Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia for three years looking for the town of Dungatar before a Film Victoria tip led them to the back of the You Yangs near Geelong, where Heath Ledger had filmed Ned Kelly; cinematographer Don McAlpine said 'We have to shoot here'.
- Kate Winslet bought a sewing machine and learnt to sew for the film, and the machine seen on screen was her own: a Singer 201K2 that she had learnt on and took over to Australia for the shoot.
- The Dressmaker beat Russell Crowe's The Water Diviner for the biggest Australian film opening at the box office and became the second highest-grossing Australian film of 2015 after Mad Max: Fury Road.
- Author Rosalie Ham encouraged the casting of extras from her hometown of Jerilderie, New South Wales, saying it was important to her that locals had a chance to be in the movie; more than 100 locals appeared as extras, and casting director Charlotte Seymour hired most of the football players from the Laharum Football Netball Club.
