A gruesome attack on a stylist upends a hairdressing contest in this invigoratingly bold debut.
Suffused with the sting of hair spray and the scent of Herbal Essences, “Medusa Deluxe” swaggers onto our screens, all cigarette smoke and mirrors. From its playfully inventive opening to its flash-forward finale, Thomas Hardiman’s wild — and wildly impressive — first feature, set during a British regional hairdressing competition, is a proudly indelicate, painstakingly structured pleasure.
Playing out in real time and shot to suggest a single, continuous take, the plot circles the sudden death of the show’s star stylist, who has been found backstage, minus his scalp. As his competitive rivals and their models await questioning by unseen detectives, everyone is under suspicion, not just the creepy security guard with the urgent requests for wet wipes. There’s the mouthy Cleve (Clare Perkins, whose opening monologue is a doozy), a stylist with barely controlled anger issues; the devout Divine (Kayla Meikle), who works part-time for an undertaker and is hence no stranger to dead heads; and the scheming Kendra (Harriet Webb), who may have fixed the contest in cahoots with its silver-pompadoured organizer (Darrell D’Silva).
Displaying a flamboyant finesse and a cheeky, can’t-sit-still sensibility, Hardiman hides nuggets of foreshadowing in seemingly throwaway remarks. The whodunit mystery droops well before the end, but the women are fantastic and their dialogue, sharp as a hairpin, has a gossipy tempo that’s fun and energizing. A jumpy, percussive score (by the British electronic artist Koreless) pulses unobtrusively beneath the action, punctuating the characters’ tightly choreographed movements and forming a sonic bond with the crumbling brick of the show’s cavernous venue.
Filmed in and around a derelict building in a postindustrial town in the north of England, “Medusa Deluxe” unfolds mainly backstage and below stairs. Clinging as close as dandruff flakes, Robbie Ryan’s snakelike camera follows characters down dimly-lit corridors and echoing stairwells, idling in the fluorescent glare of unlovely bathrooms and dressing rooms before gliding onward.
At a time when too many movies feel cautious and constrained, “Medusa Deluxe” is gloriously uninhibited and gaudily diverting. A disco blast of George McCrae will beckon you through the end credits, though the movie is not without poignancy as Cleve remarks that the medium she has spent her life teasing and weaving is dead as soon as it exits the scalp. She knows that her art is temporary, its rewards fleeting, and that her time in the spotlight may never come.
Medusa Deluxe
Rated R for weaponized words and tortured follicles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
