Summary
The year is 1951. A woman named Tilly steps off a bus in Dungatar, a rural town in the Australian outback, sets down her sewing machine bag, and lights a cigarette. She looks around at the town, takes a drag, and says menacingly, "I'm back, you bastards." Later, a policeman finds Tilly's sewing machine luggage, with a sign on it that reads, "Property of T. Dunnage, Hands Off!!" He goes to find Tilly and asks if her dress is Dior, and she tells him that she designed it herself.
When the policeman, whose name is Sergeant Farrat, calls her Myrtle, she informs him that she goes by "Tilly" now. He returns her luggage, and Tilly asks him how her mother is doing. "Molly doesn't get out much these days," he replies. Tilly goes into the old and dilapidated house and calls for her mother. She finds Molly, her mother, lying in bed, and turns on a light. Molly sits up and talks about a possum, seemingly delusional.
The next morning, Tilly asks Molly if she remembers the schoolteacher, Miss Harredine, and hits a golf ball into the field, which causes a bell to ring. Tilly then recalls Stewart Pettyman, the young boy she is alleged to have killed as a child in Dungatar 25 years prior. Tilly narrates that Stewart was the teacher's favorite, and would often blame things on Tilly, who went by Myrtle as a young girl. She then asks Molly about Mr. Almanac, the chemist. In a flashback, we see Mr. Almanac, telling a young Myrtle that her mother's a "slut" and she's a "bastard."
Tilly then asks Molly about "Shire President Pettyman," before hitting a golf ball onto his roof. Tilly tells Molly that she needs help remembering the past. "Did I commit a murder?" Tilly asks, and Molly laughs.
Later, we see Molly running through the house yelling "Murder!" as Tilly tries to quiet her and put her in the bathtub. As Molly yells out "Rape!" a young man, Teddy McSwiney, hears it. He and some other locals talk about the fact that "Myrtle" is back, and that she was sent away for good reason. We see Tilly cleaning Molly's house later while Molly takes a bath.
Later, Mrs. Harredine visits Sergeant Farrat at his office, where he is secretly trying on a dress in the back room. Mrs. Harredine complains that someone has harmed her geraniums. Farrat drives her into town and they see that a young man named William has returned to town from West Australia. William goes into a store, Pratt's, where one shop girl, Gertrude, is especially excited to see him. Mr. Pratt, the shop owner, shows William his mother's unpaid account from the previous two years, which comes to 347 pounds.
As they leave, William asks his mother who lives at "Mad Molly's," noticing that there's a fire going. All of the townspeople go to look at the house, which Tilly has cleaned up. They all begin to realize that Tilly has returned to the town, as Tilly sits down at her sewing machine on the porch with Molly.
That night at dinner, Mr. Pettyman tells his wife not to leave the house any, since there is a football tournament that weekend. He gives her a tonic to drink, which she chugs back eagerly. It evidently knocks her out, and he helps her into bed, as she looks over at the photo of their child Stewart, whom Tilly allegedly killed. When Mrs. Pettyman is unconscious, Pettyman has sex with her.
At the football tournament, Tilly arrives in a red dress, which causes a stir in the town. The footballers keep getting distracted by her red dress, and Teddy confronts her about it. He tells her that his future is resting on the outcome of the football match. Molly turns to speak to Mr. Almanack, and implies that he used to abuse his wife. On the other side of the field, William admires how beautiful Tilly has become, as Tilly takes a photo with Mr. Farrat for the paper.
At another game, Tilly approaches Gertrude and hands her a card, noting that it's the footballers' dance on Saturday night. "A dress can't change anything," Gertrude says, walking towards the field and removing various parts of her dress, distracting the opposing team. This time she is wearing a black dress. The Dungatar team wins, thanks to Tilly's help.
Analysis
The film begins in a suspenseful way, with a dramatic and tense score and a number of different shots of the past and present intermingled. We see brief glimpses of violence, childhood play, a young girl shouting in distress, as well as a bus arriving in a small town in the Australian outback. These expositional elements are fragmented, but they suggest that there is some dark event in the past that hangs over the characters in the present. This remains true when Tilly steps off the bus in Dungatar and says bluntly to herself, "I'm back, you bastards." It is a campy and heightened moment, almost like something out of an old film noir, and foreshadows that there is a mystery to be uncovered in the film.
The past and present continue to collide as Tilly gets situated in Dungatar. As she recalls her infamous past in the town to her mother, Molly, she hits a golfball into a field, which hits a bell that rings. We suddenly see a flash of her childhood schoolyard, and the bell is clanging there too. Tilly is someone who lives in both the present reality and her own past, and director Jocelyn Moorhouse illustrates this superimposition in the way she shoots the film. The timing of the flashbacks, and the ways she shoots different moments, creates a sense that while time has passed, there is a great deal that has been left unresolved.
The unsolved event from the past, it turns out, is a murder. Tilly asks her mentally-ill mother, Molly, if she committed a murder years ago, genuinely unable to recall the event, but Molly cannot help her either, having lost her mind. The schoolyard flashbacks have something to do with Tilly's alleged murderous act, but even Tilly cannot seem to remember what happened. This sets the scene for the narrative, signaling that the arc of the film will follow Tilly's journey to understand what happened all those years ago.
The various characters who live in the town serve as a colorful and oftentimes silly backdrop for Tilly's story. All of these characters are presented rather farcically, heightened representations of the eccentricities of provincial life. Thus, despite the fact that the film is about an alleged murder and the suspense of unraveling the mystery of that murder, the overall tone is rather cheeky and ridiculous at times. The Dressmaker is at its core lighthearted in tone, a film that is irreverent and does not take itself too seriously, in spite of its very serious subject matter.
In spite of the lighthearted tone, the film presents rather dark situations, which show us that, even if Tilly has been vilified by the townspeople, they all have their own skeletons in their closets. For instance, before going to bed, Mr. Pettyman feeds Mrs. Pettyman some "tonic" that knocks her out. As he lays her down in bed, he notes that she is unconscious and begins to rape her. Then, at the football match, Molly alludes to the fact that Mr. Almanack used to abuse his wife. Details like this show us the dark secrets of the provincial town, and highlights the hypocrisy of the townspeople, who judge Tilly for her alleged crime, but are themselves doing terrible things behind closed doors.
