The Titanic is now the second-biggest disaster Kate Winslet has ever been associated with. Her new one, “The Dressmaker,” is like some hellborn alloy of film noir, campy melodrama, “High Plains Drifter” and the Darwin Awards for people who die in moronic accidents.

Winslet plays a couturier who was banished from a small town in Australia 25 years prior for her part in the alleged murder of a school classmate. Now returned in 1951, she’s demonically focused on revenge and making fabulous gowns as she strikes up a romance with a rugby player (Liam Hemsworth) young enough to be her son and a friendship with a cop (Hugo Weaving) who enjoys wearing taffeta.

Like the title figure’s decision to stop having Alzheimer’s halfway through, the movie’s tonal lurches are bizarre and inexplicable, and a flashback to 25 years ago might be the stupidest resolution to a murder mystery I’ve ever seen on film.