Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Thomas Hardiman
Starring: Clare Perkins, Kae Alexander, Harriet Webb, Darrell D'Silva, Luke
Pasqualino
A film set in the context of a hairdressing competition, an event with
imperial emphasis on artisanal display and glorious ostentation,
Thomas Hardiman's Medusa Deluxe narrates and imparts
information with a conversely furtive manner. We open in a grubby
backstage, where Eastenders stalwart Clare Perkins'
Cleve is attempting to finesse a fontange while recounting a ribald
anecdote AND figure out what's happening with a bad murder apparently just
committed down the corridor. Robbie Ryan's camera pushes in towards
boorish close ups, before swinging back to take in Cleve's colleague
Divine (Kayla Meikle) and a hushed hair-model in rolling medium
frames. The film is shot all in one take, you realise with trepidation.
Cleve continues to go off on one: Mosca, the one to beat in the
competition, has been killed to death and scalped (well, it is a film
hinging on the importance of hair), leaving his rivals to fret over how
this will affect the feasibility of the competition and who is
responsible. The salon is set for taut contention, tense interactions and
caustic revelations.
Technically, it is impressive how Perkins rants, gossips and manipulates a
lightweight model of sailboat on the top of a barnet all the while under
the unblinking pressure of a tracking camera. Pending investigation in
backstage lockdown we glide, in very well-performed vignettes, from one
character to the next. The approach, however, is perhaps a little too
alienating for what is to all extents and purposes a whodunnit. A one take
which "keeps up" with players, which follows characters into different
scenes one at a time and attempts to eavesdrop on conversations, is
immersive and fast moving, yet has reduced capacity to contextualise these
characters and their situation. Told to us second-hand, the reality of the
murder itself has as much weight as Cleve's ridiculous anecdote of a
closeted gay whose wife smells semen on his breath (oh how brash and
vulgar, yeah?). Such narrative choices make it hard to hold on to
Medusa Deluxe's ensuing plot.
It doesn't help that Cleve is immensely annoying: you know loud drunk
people on the last train, the braying ones who assume everyone wants to
listen to their drivel? That. Themes of frustration and desperate
competition are thoroughly scrunched in, however, and the febrile
atmosphere - money, beefs - suggests that anyone could be the killer. I've
written before about the sanctity of hairdressers, in another
film about murder and hair mousse, and throughout this darker movie there is the optimism that class
issues, the divide between how much is paid for skilfully executed hair
and how much those who skilfully execute the cut are paid, will be
explored but the film doesn't have space to honour this hope, or
successfully probe the catty desperation of its characters.
In a film built around the novelty of the singular take, flitting across
the cast ultimately reduces engagement with the genre premise (as does the
lack of visible police, surely an injurious budgetary consequence), as the
episodic time spent with each potential suspect is rendered superficial
(could, however, the perpetrator be the beleaguered security guard who
wanders in and out of sequences like a shellshocked murderer? If not then
the film drops some massive hints). Pathos, comedy and the vivid details
of the murder never grip, and, in the film's impressively camp ending even
any lingering impact of thematic toxic gay shame is cancelled out. The
uninterrupted filming does engender a sense of urgency and is certainly
claustrophobic, but, in stark contrast to the mien of hairdressing wherein
such a dynamic makes for an essential aesthetic,
Medusa Deluxe is ultimately style over substance.
Medusa Deluxe is on MUBI UK now.
