Make Up
Directed by CLAIRE OAKLEY
Starring MOLLY WINDSOR JOSEPH QUINN STEFANIE MARTINI
Released 28 AUGUST
3 ANTICIPATION. A genre-straddling debut with a cast of new faces. Could go either way.
4 ENJOYMENT. Cornwall coming-of-age and coming out.
4 IN RETROSPECT. The ocean is the limit of Claire Oakley’s talent.
In the opening sequence of writer/director Claire Oakley’s debut, Ruth (Molly Windsor) arrives at a seaside holiday park in Cornwall to be and work with her boyfriend of three years Tom (Joseph Quinn). She is alarmed on her first night there by the sound of foxes screaming outside their caravan. “They’re not shrieking,” Tom explains to her in bed, “That’s the cubs leaving their mothers. All growing up.” It is a clear analogue for Ruth herself, permitted for the first time to leave her parents’ house in Derby. Eighteen years old, though young for her age, Ruth is on the cusp of adulthood, taking baby steps outside of her childhood safety zone into the wide world beyond. Ruth cannot swim, and her fear of the ocean is a signifier of a hitherto sheltered life and narrow horizons, far from the overwhelming waves and unfathomed depths – but what she fears she also desires.
