In Make Up, a move to the Cornish coast goes south when a girl’s jealousy turns into obsession. Claire Oakley’s feature debut – which opens in UK cinemas this week – is a genre-bending study of the inner workings of desire and its gloomy atmosphere begs the midnight screening treatment.
18-year old Ruth (Molly Windsor) decides to move in with her boyfriend Tom (Joseph Quinn), who lives and works in a remote cabin retreat. She feels displaced from get-go and a distance between her and her beau starts to creep in. Not long after, she starts to find hair – vivid, bright red – in compromising spots amid Tom’s clothes, suggesting foul play.
She jealously begins to think free-spirited Jade (Stefanie Martini), another employee at the retreat, is the culprit and tries to establish a rapport with her to investigate the matter further. What follows is a psychosexual rabbit hole, where nothing is as it seems and the most fearful thing is one’s true nature.
The script, penned by Oakley, is very interested in the ways sexuality can get the best of us when we least expect it and how we are inevitably bound to it. In her horny angst, Ruth starts seeing things that may or may not be there and her experience of reality becomes her very own straitjacket – for which she desperately seeks a key.
In this context, elements in the film become highly symbolic. The sea, a force of nature Ruth’s afraid of, is something to overcome. The red-haired girl is a scapegoat for her obsessions. And the beauty makeovers provided by Jade are a sign of the confidence she wants to have – and might just be hers if she’s brave enough. As a title, “Make Up” points to both the products she starts using to feel good and her way of processing her surroundings.
For all the rose-tinted queer productions that have come out in recently, Make Up deserves credit for tackling the tonal opposite. It nails the sheer dread of a confused sexual awakening, especially in an environment that doesn’t feel embracing. Ruth knows that Jade’s got a bad reputation for being gay. At one point, the mere suggestion that she might be results in a fight between Tom and a work colleague. Ultimately, the heart wants what it wants and she sees no escape.
The decision of making the twists and turns of its protagonist’s mind guide the narrative renders the film meandering by design, which means that even at brisk 86 minutes, it lags in places. Still, by fiercely probing a girl’s self-discovery, Make Up shows that, in a dark night of the soul, coming out to yourself can be its own source of horror.
Grade: 7
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