Credit: Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

If Vicky Krieps has just caught your attention in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix, where she plays Maggie, aka Bridget Sullivan, then here is a very good excuse to go backwards and watch the film that made plenty of people aware of her charming existence. We are talking about Phantom Thread, which arrived in 2017 with Daniel Day-Lewis taking most of the oxygen, naturally, but Krieps made sure to register her presence despite Lewis’s existence.

About ten years ago, that was no small feat. Day-Lewis had announced his retirement, so Paul Thomas Anderson’s film carried the air of a final curtain, one last performance from an actor who had spent decades making random characters breathe on screen. Surely, the retirement did not stick, and he returned with Anemone in 2025, but Phantom Thread still feels like a farewell that accidentally became a defining comeback.

In Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis plays Reynolds Woodcock, a celebrated dressmaker in 1950s London whose life is obsessively routinised, with his formidable sister Cyril, played by Lesley Manville, keeping the fashion house on its feet. Reynolds dresses society women for a living and expects his own world to operate with much the same precision.

Then comes the waitress Alma, played by Krieps, whom Reynolds meets outside London, and soon she becomes his model and lover, but living with him is another matter entirely. Reynolds expects life at home to run exactly the way he likes it, and Alma is not particularly interested in playing along.

You see, Alma has no intention of simply adapting to Reynolds and waiting for him to lose interest. As their relationship develops, she starts pushing back against the way he expects things to work, and the romance soon turns into a struggle over who gets to set the terms. Neither of them is good at compromise, which is where things get very strange.

Krieps is superb because she never lets Alma shrink beside Day-Lewis, and knowing how little-known she was to American audiences at the time only makes the performance more impressive. Watch her after Lizzie Borden, and you can see the same quality again. This lady can make even the smallest role impressive.

Let’s not forget Manville, who earned an Oscar nomination for the performance, while Day-Lewis and Anderson were nominated in their respective categories.

The film collected six Academy Award nominations altogether, including Best Picture, and Mark Bridges won for those immaculate costumes; Jonny Greenwood’s score earned a nomination too, as it should have, because half the film’s suppressed emotion seems to be hiding inside the music.

So, yes, come for Day-Lewis if you must, but don’t mistake Phantom Thread for his private victory lap. Krieps keeps stealing the balance of power back from him, and Anderson turns what could have been another handsome prestige romance into something far more mischievous.