Medusa Deluxe puts you into a mystery box like no other: a hairdresser is murdered at a seedy London hair salon during the middle of a competition; and the police aren’t letting those who were involved in the case leave, prompting tensions to brew and suspicions to be raised almost instantly. Fingers are pointed as we’re thrust into a world of talented and cutthroat hairstylists – all with an axe to grind and personalities to spare. Welcome to one of the most entertaining whodunits you’ll see all year.
Thomas Hardiman’s colourful narrative Medusa Deluxe kicks off with a bang: we get a one-take monologue of Clare Perkins’ Cleve explaining a past incident; becoming increasingly on edge, assaulting a rival all whilst performing touches to a model’s hair: the flamboyant showpiece of her epic creation. It looks the part, too: beautifully stylish but then so is everyone else there. One thing that Thomas Hardiman sets out to create from the word go is almost a showcase for how important every aspect of the creative team involved behind the scenes is – Cynthia Lawrence-John and Andrea Fiquitiva’s costume design team both do incredible work on the costumes and through those we get a real sense of these characters: Kae Alexander’s Inez, Anita-Joy Uwajeh’s Timba, Harriet Webb’s Kendra, Kayla Meikle’s Divine, all have personalities to spare from the hairdressers. And then there’s Darrell D’Silva’s Rene, the ringleader, caught up in a trouble of his own trying to keep his head together when he’s just lost someone close to him.
It’s not really an unpredictable mystery but it’s not trying to be. You know what’s coming in Medusa Deluxe before the characters do. It tells you from the off: within seconds you see the suspect wiping blood of his locker. The film delights in watching the characters eventually come to that conclusion themselves; in a kind of quasi-Columbo type way, allowing the murder to showcase how much their lives are affected by it.
There’s no sudden twists but there are a few bang moments – quite literally; moments of chance that could have been something more serious work in isolation here; the camera tracking these characters through labyrinthine corridors with stunning neon lighting gives the film an almost resemblance of a Pedro Almodóvar episode of Columbo, or a Peter Strickland Midsummer Murders. You have to give credit to the sound design too, it really feels so amplified here in key scenes when it needs for the film to work.
The characters stand out really well. Perkins’ expletive-laden rants are filmed in a way that brought to mind Stephen Graham’s chef in Boiling Point from last year; the camera lingering on her as she moves around the room. This makes a case for the brashness and vulgarity of Cleve’s character to be the most memorable of the lot, fearlessness and bold: but Luke Pasqualino’s Angel is instantly memorable from the moment he arrives, baby in tow, a mourning father to a murdered husband; flamboyant to the end. Medusa Deluxe has no reason to hide its queerness and embraces it head on – creating a lively attitude for these characters and their personalities.
