Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Cruella
2021 · Craig Gillespie · Cruella on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch each Cruella outfit answer a shape the Baroness wore first. (setting)
Jenny Beavan builds the wardrobe as a duel. Thompson's Baroness gets sculptural, immobile mid-century couture. Stone's Cruella takes those same shapes and vandalizes them with punk cutting, street materials, and deliberate mess.
Payoff: Clothes here argue about who owns taste, so a garment does the work a punch would do in another movie. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls these gests: a posture that lays bare a social relation instead of expressing a private feeling.
Watch Estella's muted colors give way to black, white, and red. (light)
Karakatsanis shoots the early Estella in dulled, disguised tones. As the persona takes hold, the frame keeps handing her stark black, white, and red, and that scheme spreads onto the rooms and the crowd around her.
Payoff: The color stops describing a scene and starts taking it over, which is how you can see the persona winning. In the reading: affective color. This is what the reading calls affective color: a color that absorbs a scene instead of merely tinting it.
Count how many scenes are cut to a song instead of dialogue. (cutting)
Editor Tatiana Riegel uses the needle-drops as a metronome. Scheming, thieving, and dressmaking arrive as montages built on records, and the cut lands on the beat rather than on a consequence.
Payoff: Momentum comes from music rather than from cause and effect, which is why the film moves even when the plot idles.
Watch the camera sweep around a party instead of holding still. (camera)
Karakatsanis keeps the camera moving through the Baroness's galas and Cruella's street stunts, circling guests and photographers. It shows an event off from every side rather than settling on one person's reaction.
Payoff: The camera treats each entrance as a performance staged for an audience, which is exactly what Cruella's attacks are.
Watch Emma Thompson's face stay still while she says something cruel. (performance)
Thompson plays the Baroness glacially, barely moving, delivering Tony McNamara's acid lines as if bored by them. Stone pitches Estella the opposite way, quick and eager, until Cruella starts borrowing Thompson's stillness.
Payoff: The two registers set the terms of the duel, and you can hear Estella learning her rival by ear.
Once you have seen it
Count the fashion attacks and note what changes between them. (structure)
Every Cruella appearance is a show aimed at the Baroness: a red-carpet ambush, a hijacked event, a garment that unfurls. Track what actually advances between them. The volume rises while the stakes hold level.
Payoff: Display repeats where consequence would accumulate, which is where the long runtime is felt and why critics blamed the songs. In the reading: attraction-image. The reading calls these attraction-images: staging that exhibits an act rather than carrying it out.
Track whether Estella ever loses ground she does not recover. (structure)
The film assembles a world where polish covers appetite: a couture house built on predation, a punk street ready to erupt beneath the salon. Then it keeps her rising. Nothing holds her down for long.
Payoff: The machinery of a descent is here without the descent, so you get the origin of a persona rather than a person.
Watch for one moment where you cannot tell Estella from Cruella. (structure)
Estella is a grifter who manufactures selves, and she carries a forger's biography. The film always signals which woman is underneath, though. The two versions never sit side by side undecided.
Payoff: Knowing which self is genuine keeps the doubling safe, so the second woman reads as a costume rather than a rival person.
Listen for Nicholas Britell's score under the licensed songs. (sound)
Beneath the wall-to-wall rock sits an original score doing the connective work. It carries feeling between the needle-drops and holds the scenes the records leave bare. On a second pass you can hear where it takes over.
Payoff: The score is where the film's emotion lives when the jukebox stops, and it explains why the quiet stretches still hold.
Carry this in: Put the stopwatch on the garments, not the scenes. Every Cruella outfit is aimed at something the Baroness wore first.