Movie Review: A Stitch In Time
It was Mahatma Gandhi who said: “To find yourself, you must lose yourself in the service of others.” Sasha Hadden’s A Stitch in Time shows us how that can be done. The touching drama is a story about an elderly dressmaker (Maggie Blinco) who, after befriending a young Chinese fashion designer (Cowboy Bebop’s Hoa Xuande), is inspired to pursue her passion.
The film is a journey of self-discovery as much as it is about chasing your dreams. While it’s her partner Duncan’s (Glenn Shorrock) sudden unemployment that is the catalyst for Liebe’s return to selling at the local market, Hadden unravels her true motivation: to seek happiness. “I find that people sort of give up on life too early,” Hadden tells Popcorn Podcast. Adding that “the bigger goals of world domination sometimes can be a bit silly” and it’s the pleasures we find in day-to-day experiences, such as “eating, talking, contributing [and] creating” that can build a life we feel blessed to live.
Listen to Popcorn Podcast’s interview with A Stitch In Time writer and director Sasha Hadden
Xoa Xuande and Maggie Blinco in A Stitch In Time
According to Hadden, the film is about more than appreciating creativity, whether it be our own or others’; it’s about seeing each other as an addition rather than a burden. Liebe’s dedication to dressmaking is what grounds the narrative and urges audiences to cheer her on. But the 5am rumbling of her sewing machine is not appreciated, to say the least, by anyone living under the same roof. With the support and generosity of friends, Liebe changes her life for the better. And so, at the heart of the film, Hadden hopes we find “community and compassion”, without which Liebe would have struggled to find her voice, secure her freedom and reach her goals.
“All my life I was trying to find my audience. It’s only now I realise that my audience was you”
– Duncan (Glenn Shorrock)
Hadden wrote the script with Jack Thompson in mind for the role of the antagonist, Duncan, but he was unavailable. It was Blinco who suggested former Little River Band musician Shorrock, which became a fortuitous turn of events as his line delivery makes for some of the most moving, shocking and funny moments in the film. Liebe’s grouchy partner is guilty of much more than bossing her around and smothering her hopes of happiness. When Christine (Belinda Giblin), an old friend, starts an intervention to pull Liebe out of the colourless hole Duncan has kept her in for years, Christine’s husband (John Gregg) warns against interfering, rationalising that Duncan would never “hit [Liebe] or harm her”. But just like Thelma and Louise, the women stick to their guns and refuse to submit to the oppressive Duncan, highlighting that mental and emotional abuse wounds just as bad as the physical. Throughout A Stitch In Time, Hadden never shies away from emphasising feminist concerns, including sexist double standards and the importance of financial independence.
Sasha Hadden with cinematographer Don McAlpine on the set of A Stitch In Time
The Dressmaker and Moulin Rouge! cinematographer Don McAlpine captures the disconnectedness and lack of affection between Duncan and Liebe with distanced shots. Production design also can’t go unrecognised, with Carlo Crescini (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) dressing each location with its own personality – a crucial component in communicating Liebe’s physical, emotional and psychological journey. For instance, the juxtaposition between Liebe and Christine’s life is illustrated through the former sitting on a lumpy bed in her dark, understated bedroom while Christine sits by her pristine, clear-blue pool. The contrast cuts are not just teasing (this is the life you could have), but foreshadowing.
Weaving together themes of friendship, resilience and drive, writer-director Sasha Hadden has created an inspiring film that will rip you up and sew you back together, one stitch at a time.
