Phantom Thread

“In Paul Thomas Anderson’s work, love can be—quite literally—a miracle,” writes Sheila O’Malley in her January/February 2018 Film Comment cover story, “Love, After a Fashion.” “People are scarred by life, their emotional resilience decimated by disappointments and neglect. But sometimes love is offered and, as Blanche DuBois says, famously, in A Streetcar Named Desire: ‘Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!’ That’s the redemptive romantic journey of Phantom Thread, where Reynolds says to Alma at one point that she may very well keep his ‘sour heart from choking.’” Of course, Phantom Thread is no familiar story of redemption through romance. O’Malley joins FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca on this week’s Film Comment Podcast to discuss its beguiling, and even radical, twist on a love story.