The elaborately styled Medusa Deluxe might be the first murder mystery set exclusively in the world of competitive hairdressing, but an energetic ensemble and eye-catching visuals help to elevate this left-field genre oddity beyond its gimmicky trappings and introduces director Thomas Hardiman as a major new talent.
Hardiman has mentioned the unlikely influence of Robert Altman’s sprawling ensembles in films such as Nashville and the cast of Medusa Deluxe is similarly overflowing. The Altman connection aside, this is a film that wears its magpie influences clearly on its sleeve, from soap operas and kitchen sink realism to detective procedurals and giallo. There is also something of the visual grittiness and neon hyper-realism of Sean Baker and the Safdie Brothers in its cinematic DNA.
The action, for the most part, takes place in the unglamorous back rooms and shadowy recesses of the competition venue. It’s a unique setting, and there is a lot of fun to be had in glimpsing behind the curtains at the cutting room floor. A premise as potentially hokey and well-worn as the whodunnit rests on the quality of its casting, and in that respect, Medusa Deluxe more than delivers. When we first meet Cleve (Clare Perkins), she is obsessively trying to perfect a fontange (an intricately assembled high headdress), while casually discussing the recent murder and scalping of one of their main competition rivals, Mosca. It is a swaggering and enjoyable turn from Perkins, who gives her character a sense of fully-rounded, lived-in authenticity with a line in memorable quips, “I can’t get over it. Who scalps a stylist?”
It’s clear from the deliciously spiky dialogue that Hardiman has a great affection for this close-knit community and the mingling of the relatively quotidian dialogue; salty humour with the surreality of a murder becomes a nicely observed microcosm of a film whose approach to tone and genre is fluid and porous. The clattering and discordant score by electronic musician Koreless adds to this disorientating swirl.
Everyone in the orbit of the competition is now a potential suspect, including (but not limited to) a religiously minded fellow competitor, Divine (Kayla Meikle), an eccentric competition organiser, Rene (Darrell D’Silva), and a shady and follicly challenged security guard, Gak (Heider Ali). There are further ripples of conflict with the arrival of Mosca’s distraught husband Angel, a comically tuned performance from Luke Pasqualino.
This seamlessly revolving succession of characters is both breathless and exhaustingly done, and while it is undoubtedly impressive, it means that some of the characters are sketched less finely than others. If the plotting starts to recede into the background, it is the seductive and alluring visual texture of Robbie Ryan’s cinematography that keeps us mesmerised. Ryan, who has done extraordinary work for directors such as Andrea Arnold, again performs miracles. Shooting in a 4.3 aspect ratio, the camera draws us into the neon-hued settings and darkened passages in a seemingly one-shot take. It is fluid, intimate, and visually intoxicating.
As the film gradually becomes dizzyingly untethered from realism, it loses some of the momentum of the central mystery, but it culminates in a musical sequence that is disarmingly out of place, unexpectedly joyous, and emblematic of a film that bristles with invention. Medusa Deluxe is a film of many serpentine and slippery pleasures.
