Ben Wheatley | Clothes on Film

MILD SPOILERS Director Ben Wheatley’s latest, Free Fire, is set in Boston, 1978, but was actually shot in Brighton in 2015. Being as the plot revolves around ten characters involved in a one hour plus shoot-out inside a disused factory, from a sartorial point of view things get rather grubby. The film’s BAFTA nominated costume designer Emma Fryer has already worked with Wheatley on The ABCs of Death (2012) and A Field in England (2013) so is used to the way his stories tend to go bananas in the final reel. Free Fire unfolds practically in real time, which amps up the tension but allows for no mistake with costume.…

Or when your costumes look like a building. Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s designs for High Rise (2016) are far more than that. But for a film set in such a heavily stylised world, especially one created by sci-fi author J.G. Ballard, homogeny is everything. In fact homogeny is terrifying. Everything is reflected in the aesthetic. The building towers, Tom Hiddleston’s trouser legs tower, and Luke Evans towers over everyone.  Director Ben Wheatley has claimed that he did not want High Rise to look like a ‘greatest hits of the seventies‘, but really that’s exactly what he’s got, certainly in terms of costume design – and that’s okay. It might not be the…