Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread (Laurie Sparham/Focus Features)

The first person to appear on screen in Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film is not Daniel Day-Lewis’s character, who runs a high-end fashion business in early 1950’s London and has the rather peculiar, borderline porn star name Reynolds Woodcock (apparently chosen by Day-Lewis, according to Anderson). It is instead Alma (Vicky Krieps), who is talking to someone off screen about her relationship with Reynolds. I don’t recall seeing this sort of framing device in an Anderson film before, but it works for this genre: a gothic romance set largely in an opulent, confining house insulated from the rest of the world. Oh, and it’s about a perfectionist creative obsessive and the woman by his side, who may/may not tolerate his regimented way of life too much longer.

We return to this fireside conversation Alma is having with a doctor (Brian Gleeson), who, through the course of the story, will be attending to Mr. Woodcock for reasons I won’t spoil, because Alma is the portal into the film, the outsider who enters into a rather specific world—a narrative device Anderson has used before, see Boogie Nights or The Master—though this time the tone all-around is one of oppression. One might even be reminded of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, where a woman’s love is put to the test by the forbidding mansion she goes to live in and its rather taciturn, stern matriarchal housekeeper. At first, Alma becomes part of Reynolds’s world when he spots her while she’s waitressing at a seaside restaurant, before he remakes her into a model.

While Reynolds is the film’s obsessive-compulsive center, it’s his sister, Cyril (Lesley Manville), who really runs the business. I’m sure most viewers are coming to the movie for the obvious reason, to see the reteaming of the filmmaker and star of the monolithic, masterful There Will be Blood, but I doubt many expect to see Manville, an often vulnerable player in Mike Leigh films, to play such a force as Cyril. She is someone who can give a cold look seemingly without trying and offer the kind of cutting remarks that put Reynolds in his place. Indeed, the most thrilling and quite funny exchanges happen between brother and sister, as Manville does the impossible task of showing up another most-intense-ever performance by Day-Lewis. In other words, you come for Anderson and Day-Lewis but stay for Manville.

Another performer who does a wonderful job is Krieps, in her first major role after years of smaller roles (Hanna, A Most Wanted Man). What’s so impressive is how Almas initially seems so plain and ordinary, which may be by design, perhaps an ode to Joan Fontaine’s role in Rebecca. Another film that comes to mind is another recent auteur-driven story of creative, uh, damnation via inspiration, Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, which also has its share of cringe-comedic turns, all based on its characters’ behavior. The key difference here is that Alma is given much more agency and is not stuck in the grinding gears of a rigid allegory. There’s room for interpretation, especially near the end, regarding the uncanny relationship that develops between Reynolds and Alma. Nothing occurs the way one thinks it should.

This is not an easy film to take in, though, and this has nothing not to do with the rich cinematography (uncredited, though led by Anderson and his usual team of camera assistants) and Jonny Greenwood’s score, loaded with strings that loudly, almost screamingly, emphasizes all of the emotional turmoil under the standard British reserve. It at first seems overbearing, but very quickly it became one of the most inspired scores I’ve ever heard for any film. And Reynolds’s townhouse, the center of his fashion empire, becomes its own presence as a claustrophobic setting.

However, the couple at the center have such a unique dynamic; Reynolds is stuck in his way of doing everything, whether it’s designing a dress or eating asparagus, and Alma just wants to feel noticed and, more to the point, not lose some sense of control in the relationship so that the power dynamic isn’t completely skewed. The driving conflict between these two ends up becoming really twisted (though that’s up to interpretation), which will divide audiences.

Frankly, I’m happy about that. I left Phantom Thread feeling bewildered and shaken but knowing I’d seen another unique Anderson film and that I needed to—and wanted to—see it again to take in performances and set pieces or parts of the filmmaking I’d missed. It pushes buttons in a way that doesn’t skirt so far into pretension that it has to dig its way out, like mother!, or, with its dominant/submissive relationship, become stuck in bad writing, like a “Fifty Shades” retread.