Flasz On Film

What is makeup used for? Well, depending on who you ask, you may get differently slanted answers, but one that seems to follow some kind of anthropological logic indicates it is used to emphasize one’s features. You add rouge to your cheeks, shade around your eyes, or colour to your lips to bolster your image and increase your perceived attractiveness. So, we either hide what we look like or at least apply a filter to what we look like, primarily to feel a bit more confident and self-assured. However, that’s just one way to look at it.  

Some, like Dan (Will Masheter) – one of the leading characters in Makeup written and directed by Hugo André – use make up not so much to hide who they are behind an avatar of camouflage, but rather to be perceived as who they feel they are, and to hide who the world thinks they are. See, Dan wears a suit to work. He shows up every day of the week to work as a stockbroker in a veritable shark tank of pompous masculinity. But his suit and job do not define him as a person because when nobody’s looking, he is busy leafing through fashion magazines and on his days off he practices dancing and rehearses for his evening performances in a burlesque drag troupe. He lives a life of quiet desperation, trapped in the hamster wheel of earning big bucks among human equivalents of hyenas, while he sees himself much less as an apex predator, and more as a delicate bird forced to wear a hyena costume to work.  

However, things change when he rents his spare bedroom to Sacha (played by Hugo André), a French former chef turned food critic. And what follows is a quirky yet vivacious medley of drama and comedy that infrequently veers into a quagmire of heavy-handed characterizations, but ultimately triumphs as a fairy tale of self-actualization, mutual acceptance, discovery and, most of all, friendship.  

Quite frankly, there is a multitude of films that attempt to achieve what Makeup does seemingly with self-assured effortlessness, especially in the context of queer acceptance and incorporation of an entire spectrum of self-expression into the general societal composition. However, many such movies – especially coming out of festivals – either openly or inadvertently land in quite insular universes of storytelling, thus allowing only their core audiences to fully connect with them, leaving the rest of the world with a limited choice of (a) walking past them on the way to watch literally anything else and (b) attempting to relate by proxy, either through politeness or a desire to help the cause. Which is also why some festival darlings (even the most tender ones) often disappear from the cultural consciousness as quickly as they entered it, relegated to the lower shelves of the Netflix library or into the distributor’s closet never to be heard from again.   

Now, I sincerely hope that Makeup will evade such a tragic fate, specifically on the back of its quirky appeal combined with relatablility that extends far beyond what the back-of-the-DVD synopsis of “a man struggling with his gender identity and expression forms a bond with another repressed individual” would have you believe. This movie gets almost everything right. It finds a vocabulary to express its core message relating to the tragedy of not fitting into the outside world and feeling trapped in your own body in such a way that people who simply cannot relate to those experiences directly will still find plenty to connect with. That’s because the filmmakers are simply interested in exploring the nuances of the human condition more generally instead of narrowing their focus around sociopolitical messaging. They use narrative tools and metaphors that many viewers will be able to find familiar because everyone has at some point felt insecure. Many of us felt lonely and abandoned. And by virtue of connecting with these fundamental emotions, Makeup allows us to extend our understanding and empathize with others who will resonate with the movie directly.  

This film is a bridge built not with politeness but honesty, which by the way is exactly how the two leads form their initial bond in a seemingly throwaway scene that at least to my mind becomes a crucial element of why Makeup is such a relatable story. It takes place in the kitchen where Dan is cooking dinner and offers Sacha a plate after finding out the latter is a food critic. However, Dan isn’t merely interested in finding out if his cooking is palatable. He is using this opportunity to see if Sacha is someone he could trust, or if he is an alpha hyena like his work colleagues, in front of whom he’d be forced to pretend and hide his true self.  

On Sacha’s end of the conversation – and this is an extremely relatable moment for anyone dabbling with any form of criticism – he can either be polite and tell Dan the food is good regardless of if it is true or not, or give him an honest review. What’s interesting in this scene is that Dan then proceeds to add peanut butter to Sacha’s plate, which by his own admission is very unconventional, but it makes the dish better. Read it as it makes the dish his. Sacha passes the test by telling him the peanut butter makes everything too salty. He politely excuses himself and asks Dan not to keep his plate in the fridge for later, which I believe is to be read as “It’s a bit too much for me, but I’m happy you like it” – a tacit acknowledgment of acceptance. And the rest of the film follows on from this initial test to allow both leads to find confidence to express themselves in a completely uninhibited manner.  

In consequence, Makeup is a triumph or relatability that emanates emotional depth at frequencies general audiences will be more than capable of resonating with. This is partly thanks to the story itself and the appropriate characterizations employed by the lead actors, but the core of why this movie generates such a multitude of synaptic connections with the viewer has to do with its direction. In his feature debut, Hugo André successfully captures the spirit of Wong Kar Wai and the quirky allure of Richard Ayoade to confidently elbow his way into the artistic space inhabited by Xavier Dolan and Barry Jenkins. Sure, this young director is at the very beginning of the road to be seen as peers to such great masters, but it is merely a matter of time if he continues to capitalize on his inspirations in such a splendid manner.  

After all, not often do you get the chance to watch a movie dealing with socially sensitive and perhaps politically charged issues that not only you could show to your conservative parents, but also that they’d come out with their lives enriched in some way. Makeup is just one of those movies that successfully drives its message into the viewer without them ever feeling they are being preached to. It is a tender celebration of diversity and acceptance that knows not to overwhelm with its messaging, because it uses the lingo of exaggerated characterizations to effectively function as an idiosyncratic fairy tale. Not to beat you into polite obedience.