Make-Up

A young women discovers more than she expected when she goes to live with her boyfriend on a bleak Cornwall caravan park as the season closes. Conjuring an array of potential outcomes from the off, it's left to the viewer to fill in the gaps and provide the explanations for their meaning as the haunting, occasionally claustrophobic and suffocating sequences play out - for real or imagined. Ultimately a voyage of discovery, that stays in the shallows, doesn't sail too far from the coastline, narrating a familiar tale but done so in an imaginative way.

Unlike most reviewers on here I thought this was a terrific movie. Low budget yes, but all the better for it in my opinion. Much more realistic than those glossy films that have had a load of money thrown at them. And to those complaining about its slow pace, it says more about your lack of concentration than anything else. It allows the characters room to develop and the atmosphere to build. There is a sense of foreboding and the thought that something awful is about to happen. Coming of age/coming out dramas are not my usual fare but this was really well done.

An 18 year old girl arrives at an out-of-season caravan park by the sea to stay with her boyfriend who works there. She quickly suspects he is involved with another girl and becomes somewhat paranoid. The setting is perfect for the mood and atmosphere the director wants to convey; bleak, lonely, downbeat, and often downright creepy and unsettling. The movie has a very slow pace which in my view works very well, but it will alienate some.

The story has a serious flaw however in that we never really get to know the main character before her certainties begin to unravel and so are not really invested in her plight as we should be. The movie is far more comfortable when tackling her burgeoning friendship with a female character from the campsite than it is when we are asked to believe in her relationship with her boyfriend, which is glossed over and shallow and never really convincing. I like how the director was married to visual storytelling but we needed some kind of conversation between the main character and her boyfriend to believe something was at stake. The ending also falls a little flat, if it can be called an ending. It feels more like we are being told this mysterious, ethereal film was really just a lot of fuss about nothing.

My rating is generous because I like this style of film-making and would definitely watch more by this director, but if she wants to use male characters they should be more than just props and plot conveniences. 6/10

Most viewers may not like the slow pace and sparse dialogue but I thought overall it was quite effective in telling a good story. I'm a fan of Eric Roehmer. The slow everyday-pace set a tone of mystery. The young woman is trying to figure out what's going on as are we. I hope to see more from the director-writer. The lead actress is exceptional.

'Make Up (2019)' follows a young woman who moves to a caravan park in Cornwall in order to be with her long-term boyfriend. As she adjusts to her new life, she finds herself increasingly unsettled by a mysterious redhead and the gnawing feeling that something just isn't right. The piece is a small, isolated experience that focuses on putting you in the perspective of its quiet main character. Its story is a blend of the overtly mundane and the subtly bizarre. As such, its genre is difficult to define. It really is an odd one, a relationship drama infused with often genuinely unsettling suspense - the stuff that belongs in a straight-up horror. That contrast creates an uneven experience that often feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. That's actually rather fitting in retrospect, as uncertainty is a major theme of the movie, but it makes for an inconsistent in-the-moment experience. On top of that, the affair sometimes borders on being dull. It gets increasingly interesting as it goes on, though, and it does a good job of putting you in the head of its protagonist. It often succeeds in getting under your skin, featuring several disquieting scenes that almost put actual horror films to shame. Once you realise what it's doing (and has been doing all along), it becomes a lot more interesting. It explores its themes in a rather innovative way, subtly and slowly unravelling its material. It isn't exactly exciting but it is often engaging. It's a solid and unconventional first-time effort. 6/10