Kathleen Falconer
Medusa Deluxe: darkly humorous if not hair-raising. Sometimes you read the synopsis for a film you’ve never heard of and feel compelled to go and see it based on intrigue alone. This is how I found myself at the BFI Southbank last Friday settling in to watch a Q&A screening of Medusa Deluxe. As proof, I include said synopsis here: “A high-stakes hairdressing competition descends into paranoia and chaos after a participant is viciously murdered.”
I mean, how can you resist?
Wrongly, I had assumed this would be a Hot Fuzz style caper comedy, at least, this was how I pitched it to two of my unsuspecting friends. Instead it was a much more ‘theatrical’ offering as my friend sat next to me put it.
Cut To It
Five minutes into the film and we have met rival competitors, Cleeve (Claire Perkins, Eastenders) and Divine (Kayla Meikle, The Capture), as they spar about the lives of colleagues, personal histories, and why Divine now only does house calls. We also learn that Cleeve seems to be an omen of doom for those she crosses paths with, not that she is particularly concerned matter-of-factly stating, “trainee hairdressers don’t survive exploding cars.”
Enter Darrell D’Silva as Rene, competition owner, to valiantly inform us that a scalping has taken place. This puts quite a spanner in the works and the attendees are forced to remain within the building until the police have done their work, allowing us to meet the oddball selection of personalities left inside. There is one very clear outsider in this world of hairspray and bobby pins; Gac (Heider Ali), whose bald head marks him out from the moment we are introduced to him as he nervously asks for wet wipes.
But how does someone end up scalped? Well, as third entrant Kendra (Harriet Webb, I May Destroy You) bluntly explains, “you just cut and pull.”
And that’s about as good an explanation as we’ll get for the first half of the film at least.
On the Fringes
We get a sense of this being an underground universe, separate from reality- the coiffured creations sported by the models and flickering neon lights add to this.
There is a particular joy found in the darkly humorous that Medusa Deluxe recognises and taps into
The film’s writer and director Thomas Hardiman describes hairdressing as a place where the high of cultural importance and ritual meets the low of fun and visual play. This sentiment certainly permeates his film. On the one hand you have characters struggling with concepts of purpose and faith, on the other, outrage erupts over being described as having the face shape of “an inverted pear”.
There is a particular joy found in the darkly humorous that Medusa Deluxe recognises and taps into, peppered with lines such as, “how do you tell someone their lover’s just been scalped?”, delivered with delicious sincerity by D’Silva.
The cast is wonderful to watch, many of them literally carrying the weight of the film’s core subject, ‘hair’, on their shoulders. There should be masterclasses in how to convey any emotion other than pain whilst supporting a Georgian style wig complete with ship on one’s head. Luke Pasqualino (last seen by me as Freddie in Skins) had the audience in my screening wrapped around his gesticulating finger as the deceased’s partner and co-parent. If at times a caricature of camp, his performance is endlessly entertaining.
There are some enjoyably half-hearted attempts to point fingers at each other with an undertone of professional rivalry, but this is no detective story. If you go into Medusa Deluxe with expectations of a Poirot style unveiling of motivations and evidence, you will find yourself short-changed.
Style Over Substance?
The film is shot to look like one take, in the style of Birdman rather than Boiling Point. We walk with characters between beats and locations and the ever-twisting corridors, fire escapes and stairways lend themselves to a creeping sense of voyeurism as the viewer is forced to follow characters’ movements for longer than feels polite. Like a hug that lasts over three seconds.
This device is effective and well done, if perhaps overused. I found myself at times feeling tired as if in sympathy with the actors’ step count, although this may be more to do with my deplorable attention span. Unlike it’s predecessor Boiling Point, which genuinely is done is one take, I’m unconvinced Medusa Deluxe sits comfortably in this format, despite how impressive the effect is in a film so full of mirrors.
It’s genuinely sweet and alludes to a side of the characters that exists beyond the bizarre realms of the film
Other far more qualified reviewers have described Medusa Deluxe’s characters as fluffy and without substance, but in this I have to disagree. There is a particularly lovely scene after an explosion from Cleeve, leading to a self-imposed time-out as she finishes her fontange, “not a pouf,” where her and Divine share a moment of connection as she reluctantly allows her photo to be taken next to her creation. It’s genuinely sweet and alludes to a side of the characters that exists beyond the bizarre realms of the film.
The Root Issue
It seems to lose its nerve
There’s a ticking throughout Medusa Deluxe, partly induced by the pacing characters but mainly by a beautiful score crafted by electronic artist Koreless. I really wanted more of that score and the sense of unease and unknown it imparted.
In fact, my overall criticism with an otherwise very enjoyable film is this- rather than leaving the viewer with the adrenaline rush of ambiguity around what actually happened, it seems to lose its nerve. In the last minutes we are shown, or rather not quite shown, the events around the scalping.
As a lifelong fan of the traditional ‘whodunnit’ reveal, in this case I would have preferred to remain in the dark.
Featured image courtesy of Nikolaos Dimou via Pexels. Image license found here. No changes have been made to this image.
