Available on digital download in the UK from Monday June 26th, is the low-budget British drama, Makeup. The movie – directed by, co-written, and starring Hugo Andrè – follows the story of an introverted French food critic who moves in with a less-than successful salesman, who also moonlights in a drag show.
In the film, food critic and blogger Sacha has moved to the UK to conduct restaurant reviews. While here, he shares a house with salesman Dan – an outgoing Irish man with a secret: When Dan is not at work, he performs in drag.
During their first couple of days together, Sacha and Dan barely interact. But when Sacha comes home to find Dan in drag, this soon opens up a conversation about Dan’s life in showbusiness.
However, while Dan feels comfortable talking to Sacha about his night time activity, he is not ready to discuss his personal life with his work colleagues. Dan works in a narrow-minded, male-dominated office, where he is surrounded by men with outdated viewpoints, and his drag life would not go down well.
Competently put together, but sadly a touch too slow, Makeup has some decent ideas and it means well, but it struggles to entertain. The picture takes forever to get off the ground, never really goes anywhere, and when it does get going it all comes to an abrupt end.
The script, which director/star Hugo Andrè co-wrote with co-star Will Masheter shows some promise, but it’s not sharp enough or strong enough to get all its messages across. There is an important conversation in here about straight men liking drag, and some comments on toxic masculinity in the work place, but there’s so much padding around these topics the film loses sight of what it’s trying to say.
In short: I believe the script could have done with another draft. A bit more structure, as well as a lot more editing would make all the difference.
On a more positive note, Andrè and Masheter are fine in their respective on-screen roles as Sacha and Dan, and the pair try their best to disguise the financial limitations of the budget. It’s clear from the outset there is very little money attached to this film, so they do what they can.
Personally, I believe they would have been wise to cut down the running time, so they could focus on the core parts of the film, and this might have helped with the budget. It would also help to quicken the pace.
I don’t want to heap any further criticisms on the movie, because I can see what it is aiming for, it just doesn’t achieve it. The biggest problem is Makeup spends 90-minutes trying to tell 30-minutes’ worth of story and this is always going to be an issue.
Hopefully, Andrè and Masheter can use this film as a springboard for something which hits the spot in the future. So, it’s a ‘no’ from me for now, but I’m hopeful it’ll be a ‘yes’ next time around.
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