CARAVAN OF COURAGE
MAKE UP I Claire Oakley’s feature debut puts a new twist on coming-of-age…
Films often stem from the tiniest of seeds. Take Claire Oakley’s absorbing debut Make Up. After writing a never-made short about a girl seeing fleeting glimpses of another woman in a foreign city, Oakley twisted the idea to examine the blossoming sexuality and inner turmoil of a young woman. “I wanted to look at the tricks that the mind plays on you to disguise what you might really be feeling,” she explains.
In the film, 19 year-old Ruth (Three Girls star Molly Windsor) arrives at a Cornwall holiday park where her boyfriend Tom (Joseph Quinn) works. When she discovers strands of hair and a lipstick print, she begins to believe he’s cheating on her. Fuelled by paranoia, she’s also thrown into a maelstrom of confusion by fellow resident Jade (Stefani Martini), a make-up artist who takes a shine to the vulnerable Ruth.
Inspired by Roman Polanski’s psychological thrillers Repulsion, Cul-de-sac and The Tenant, and even taking hints from the body-horror transformation of An American Werewolf In London, Oakley also drew from her time staying in the caravan park while drafting the script. “That was really interesting because I hadn’t taken in the potential for it to be this creepier, darker, maze-like labyrinthine place,” she says.
“And so I did a lot of wandering around at night.”
Made via iFeatures – the microbudget filmmaking scheme that’s also funded Lady Macbeth and Apostasy – Oakley’s cunningly chosen setting even provided the perfect accommodation for cast and crew. “Having made a short previously, which we shot on the top of a mountain that we had to hike up every day with camera lenses in our backpack – and we’d lose half a day of the shoot doing it – I was like, ‘I’m not doing that ever again!’ I wanted a location that had power points everywhere you go!” JM
ETA | 31 JULY / MAKE UP RELEASES NEXT MONTH.