The best laid plans etc etc.  I had planned a thought provoking few words on water but that will keep.  Actually it was water that distracted me – another cold, wet, winter Saturday led me to spend the afternoon at the cinema seeing what is hyped as Daniel Day Lewis’s last film, God willing, which serendipitously allows me to use my favourite new phrase again.

Actually there’s not a lot of fashion and a good deal less detail about the couture process than I had hoped.   Despair was there in spades.  It cannot be denied that DDL is a great actor but there is something about him that just oozes pretension and this is not just based on the testimony of a chum who worked on ‘My Left Foot’ and told me that by the end of filming there wasn’t one of the crew who wouldn’t have happily chopped off both of his feet, or chucked his trolley out of a top floor window with him in it.

The success of a portrait lies in revealing the soul of the sitter.  Whatever you do,  it shows on your face and never more so than in big close-ups on screen and however well Mr Lewis acts, I can’t move very far beyond thinking that he doesn’t seem like a very nice person.  I could be wrong.  It’s not likely.

Other than Lincoln, which – plot spoiler alert – doesn’t end happily, I haven’t liked any of his films. ‘There will be blood’ would have been more accurately described as ‘There will be shouting.  A lot of shouting’. I didn’t see ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to discover that the rest of the tribe threw themselves off a cliff after the first day’s filming and ‘Gangs of New York’ was more shouting and fighting.  With gangs. In New York.

One of the few plots surprises in ‘Phantom Thread’ is not that his wife tries to poison him – I imagine she took quite a lot of persuading not to do away with herself at the end of the first hour.  Of several hours.  This film goes on. And on. And on.  Never mind retiring, I’m impressed that anyone lived long enough to get to the end.  Next time you get out your dressmaking scissors Dan, use them to chop out the surplus two thirds of this marathon.

Lesley Manville who plays his sister – and why is she called Cyril for pity’s sake? – is just pure Mrs Danvers but without the laughs.  His wife is very beautiful.

Another film showing this weekend is ‘Coco’ which I though might be about Chanel until I checked.  It’s actually a Disney cartoon but on reflection I wish I’d seen that.  Probably not such good acting but certainly prettier dresses and a good deal less despair.