Medusa Deluxe, a whodunit set in the world of competitive hairdressing

Jan 14, 2024

Ironically for a film about competitive hairdressing, Medusa Deluxe doesn't contain a single cut. In each scene – well, arguably the whole movie is one scene – the camera spins through impossible angles, floats up and down elaborate architecture, and emerges unscathed in a new location. So even though the twisty, scissor-y plot concerns the discovery of a dead body, the viewer plays detective in another way, trying to spot the secret seams that connect the various takes. Not only is Thomas Hardiman's debut feature a murder mystery, it's also a merger mystery.

Still, Hardiman remains unbothered as to whether audiences are so immersed in Medusa Deluxe that they forget the Birdman-esque gimmick, or if they go "aha" whenever a passing object conveniently covers the entire frame. "It's much more about being immediate," the jovial writer-director tells me, in May, in a King's Cross office space. "It's like a Harry Potter magic wand, having that freedom with the camera. I’m all about geography, and showing spaces in ways they haven't been seen. It's about breaking down the medium. It's about creating a lot of spinning plates, and seeing which ones break."

Aided by the cinematography of Robbie Ryan (The Favourite, American Honey, Marriage Story), Hardiman's whodunit gleefully parades its brightly coloured, ostentatious setting: a hairdressing competition in which a stylist has been assassinated, most likely by one of the many chatty, gossipy rivals. Among the suspects are Cleve (Clare Perkins), Divine (Kayla Meikle), and René (Darrell D’Silva), each with their own motivations, life complications, and deathly sharp scissors.

"We had a hairdresser screening last night," Hardiman says. "It means a lot to me that they loved it." Did he source them through a hairdressing Facebook group? "No, I emailed a lot of hairdressers, begging them to come down. There's not that many films about hairdressing, and I want to champion it. I want hairdressers to feel the love in the film for the industry." All the hairstyles on screen were designed by the famed stylist Eugene Souleiman. "Eugene has a particular way of working where he's breaking down hair design. He's showing you the artifice. It's the same as contemporary sculpture."

Hardiman started his directing career in 2015 with Radical Hardcore, a comedic short about carpet obsessives that was launched by Dazed. "Radical Hardcore was specifically a response to the internet. We’re surfing Twitter and Instagram, going from crying to laughing to happiness to sadness so quickly. I wanted to bring that to Medusa. My nieces watch hour-long YouTubes of makeup tutorials with no cuts. It's a teenager in their bedroom, walking around, doing their makeup, and talking to camera. That's modern media. How do you go back to something like a murder mystery?"

The eventual solution was to deconstruct the genre to the point that Medusa Deluxe doesn't even have a detective. "Instead, it becomes a character-led drama, in the territory of things like Robert Altman's Nashville, which is my passion." In fact, in his pitch document, Hardiman listed three key influences: Nashville, Tangerine, and RuPaul's Drag Race. "I wanted to make something bombastic that would grab people."

Premiering at Locarno Film Festival, Medusa Deluxe is atypical for a British feature, eschewing drab, grey stereotypes about the country's setting and dodging a typical three-act structure. With a background in art, not film school, Hardiman notably names cinematic inspirations that experiment with the medium, such as The Arbor and Memoria, and praises Apichatpong Weerasthekul for "properly breaking cinema".

"When EastEnders did their hour-long live episode, people dismissed it, but they shouldn't," Hardiman says. "There's things in there that we can all learn from, in the same way a Twitch streamer can play computer games for an hour and work with stories. You have classic stories that have been around since Greek myths, but there's ways of pushing them in new directions. I love chaos. I’m there to push the limit of filmmaking so it might collapse, and then you’ve got something really alive."

As Clare Perkins is a former regular on EastEnders – EastEnders, like Nashville, is about the interactions of a community – is Medusa Deluxe actually EastEnders for a MUBI audience? "It's more about ensemble casts. I come from a big Irish family. Everyone's a raconteur. As I started to read Irish authors, I realised that kind of storytelling is part of the culture… I wouldn't say it's necessarily EastEnders for a MUBI audience."

Right now, Hardiman is writing his second feature, a comedy that will be set in the world of finance. Given the visual aesthetic of Medusa Deluxe, will this next film consist of colourful, ostentatious calculators, staplers, and office equipment? "I want it to be fun," he says. "I’m passionate about a specific type of comedy. That fine line of: ‘Is it funny? Is it not?’ When it's right on the edge. I like comedy, I like drama, and I like pushing boundaries. It's going to be coming from a similar direction."

He adds, "Films like Tangerine, Titane, and Everything Everywhere All At Once are telling stories in a different way, and connecting with a new audience who’ve grown up with the internet. If you’re going to pick up a camera, you want to make a story for modern audiences."

Medusa Deluxe is now showing in cinemas across the UK, Ireland and Germany