An ingenious comedy that imitates one-take productions, it is rather built on the basis of well-structured, assembled and recorded sequences that, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock's «Rope», resolve the transitions by means of dissolves and cuts between black shots and other resources. Unlike Hitchcockian drama, however, the camera is not static, but a mobile 'stylo' that enters dressing rooms, bathrooms, elevators, and a stage, and moves through stairs, corridors and gates.
As in «Rope», the plot revolves around the murder of a person (a hairdresser), whose scalp was torn off after being killed, in the middle of a celebration. Instead of a group of guests in an apartment, with the corpse cleverly hidden, here it is a center for events and shows in London, where a hairdressing contest is happening. So the form is the content and viceversa, they are two faces of the same complex portrait and complementary reflections on the modern lives of those who are usually out of frame in mainstream cinema.
The central cast looks like a postcard from Benetton with vibrant, vivacious and energetic actors of various ethnicities, made up of the fearsome hairdressers Cleve (Clare Perkins), Kendra (Harriet Webb) and Divine (Kayla Meikle) who compete for the grand prize, the promoter René (Darrell D'Silva), the Colombian hairdresser Angel (Luke Pasqualino), the models Angie (Lilit Lesser), Inez (Kae Alexander), Timba (Anita-Joy Uwajeh), and Etsy (Debris Stevenson), the security guards Gac (Hieder Ali) and Patricio (Nicholas Karimi), and the baby Pablo (twins Logan and James Porter). They all wait for the Police to arrive to question them about the murder of the fearsome Mosca (John Alan Roberts), but since the police arrive after the storm as the rainbow, we follow plenty scenes and dialogues of confrontation, persecution, violence, confessions, music and dancing.
Thomas Hardiman wrote and directed his first feature film and the result was this great film that makes us spend 101 minutes of fun, synergy and extravagance, without missing touching moments, guided by the admirable photography of Robbie Ryan and his operator Jake Whitehouse.
