Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Rachel Carey
Starring: Angeline Ball, Ericka Roe, Lauren Larkin, Shauna
Higgins, Aidan McArdle, Victoria Smurfit
A hairdressing salon where the employees get into a scuffle with a
difficult visitor and end up killing him to death with a cutting scissors?
Heck, in this lockdown situation I’ll take any barbers I can get,
amirite?! Ah lol. Obligatory office wag jokes out of the way, the absolute
shaggy dog joy of writer/director Rachel Carey’s black comedy
Deadly Cuts (the title punning upon the colloquial Irish for
‘awesome’, of course) may well prove a (hair) tonic for those of us in
need of a further spritz of cheer in these trying times.
Angeline Ball (portrait in attic, etc) plays Michelle, the manager
of the eponymous salon which is situated within a run-down residential
Dublin estate, Piglinstown. A grimly familiar urban montage of lone
supermarket trolleys, along with burned out cars and tied trainers hanging
from overhead phone lines tells anyone who has lived in working-class
Ireland or Britain all they need to know about the social context of
Deadly Cuts, where Michelle presides over her comic crew of four hairdressers, who
are all in some way affected by the reign of social terror which a local
gang of gobshites enacts upon the community.
This cultural specificity of Deadly Cuts’ milieu is sustained by the indelicate and dirty humour of the film’s
opening scenes, which (let’s face it, the many many) fans of
Mrs Brown’s Boys will lap up. Being a ponced-up
sophisticate, these scenes were slightly too broad for my tastes, but when
Deadly Cuts’ narrative eventually beds in, and the crude, quick humour is matched
with a pacey ‘ordinary-people-in-over-their-head’ plot, the film coalesces
into something fantastic.
Chief head-the-ball gang leader Deano (Ian Lloyd Anderson) comes to
the salon after hours to give the girls some shit after they stand up to
him in the local. For his trouble, Deano (those names!) gets a wash and
blow dry to the face, and a fatal snip between the shoulder blades. In a
nastily funny sequence, the cutting crew must then get rid of the body,
where they discover Deano’s phone, which they use to call the gang off
(another reason to cherish Deadly Cuts is the
straightforward, unglamorous representation of the local ne’er do wells as
pathetic and thick bullies).
Based around this situation, the comedy is dark as a botched dye job, and
as amusing too: disposing of the body under cover of night, a character
wearing those massive hair rollers in her barnet says that no one will
recognise them, to which Michelle, taking in the head on her companion,
deadpans, "yeah, no one is going to connect us with hairdressers..." -
hahahaha!
Happy days then, except for the inconvenience that some sleazy nob wants
to demolish the estate’s commercial centre in the name of Bad Capitalism.
Our intrepid bunch have to somehow maintain the cover up of Deano’s death,
while this scut attempts to undermine their business, too. Michelle needs
something to put Deadly Cuts back on the map: cue the annual ‘Ahh Hair’
hairdressing competition...
Eventually, the film builds towards a sort of Nativity style burlesque in
the final act, replete with a local youth club bunch of teen dancers and
lots of daft fun (the insanely camp scenes also feature
Victoria Smurfit sat upon an oiled up hunk - somebody sound the gay
klaxon up in here!).
Like everyone else, I fucking love going to get my hair cut - enjoy being
part of a close-knit gang for an hour or so, sharing local gossip
(hairdressers always know what’s up), just generally having a laugh. In
the absence of this social opportunity, Deadly Cuts is a
fair substitute. A silly, funny and irresistibly warm-hearted film. Never
mind a bit off the back and sides, I’m wondering how I will ever remove
the wall to wall grin which Deadly Cuts has styled me with.
Deadly Cuts is on Netflix UK/ROI now.