Medusa Deluxe

For any­one old enough to remem­ber the ear­ly 2000s BBC dra­ma Cut­ting It, you’ll know that the only thing more dan­ger­ous than the sharp end of a pair of salon scis­sors is the rival­ry amongst the styl­ists. Writer-direc­tor Thomas Hardiman’s debut fea­ture Medusa Deluxe tack­les this notion head-on by explor­ing the fall­out after the fron­trun­ner in a hair­dress­ing com­pe­ti­tion is quite lit­er­al­ly scalped backstage.

Word of styl­ist Mosca’s untime­ly death arrives through fel­low com­peti­tor Cleve (a scene-steal­ing Claire Perkins). The incon­ve­nience of a build­ing lock­down draws Cleve’s ire; her focus is more ded­i­cat­ed to the intri­cate Geor­gian Fontange atop her model’s head than what­ev­er is miss­ing from Mosca’s. Spec­u­lat­ing on the mur­der with anoth­er com­peti­tor, Divine (Kay­la Meik­le), before launch­ing into some impres­sive­ly foul-mouthed sto­ry­telling, Cleve is con­trast­ed with a gag­gle of mod­els holed up in anoth­er room, dis­cussing who the killer could be with con­cern that the per­pe­tra­tor could still be among them.

Across the film’s run­time, it’s inevitable that details of the victim’s past and shady deal­ings bub­ble to the sur­face. These devel­op­ments intro­duce Mosca’s dis­traught hus­band, Angel (Luke Pasquali­no), rival styl­ist Rene (Dar­rell D’Silva), for­mer flame Patri­cio (Nicholas Kari­mi) and enig­mat­ic secu­ri­ty guard Gac (Hei­der Ali) – the clear out­sider in this com­mu­ni­ty of colour­ful characters.

In a world where show-stop­ping appear­ances win prizes, Hardi­man ful­ly embraces this ethos through Rob­bie Ryan’s cap­ti­vat­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy. As the gos­sip and sus­pi­cion spread like wild­fire, the cam­era moves just as gin­ger­ly. Our van­tage point appears as one shot, well edit­ed by Faoud Gaber, that shifts per­spec­tive when one per­son cross­es paths with another.

While Hardi­man mas­ters the visu­al ele­ments of Medusa Deluxe, as we progress towards the con­clu­sion, the sto­ry­telling ele­ments begin to fal­ter. The unveil­ing of events and key details is either too expect­ed or not impact­ful enough. Perkins con­tin­ues to be a high point, deliv­er­ing a clos­ing speech that per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the allure, deep mean­ing and nec­es­sary ruth­less­ness of the hair­dress­ing world. How­ev­er, the oth­er char­ac­ters don’t feel as ful­ly realised, despite the clear promise shown in our moments with them.

With Medusa Deluxe, Hardi­man makes a direc­to­r­i­al debut that suc­cess­ful­ly injects a fresh, vibrant per­spec­tive into the mur­der mys­tery genre while still employ­ing the dark dread that stands as its trade­mark. How­ev­er, in show­ing how much fur­ther the genre can be ele­vat­ed visu­al­ly, oth­er vital ele­ments of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and plot don’t quite match them in reach­ing the impres­sive intri­ca­cy of Cleve’s beloved Fontange.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, month­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.