Make Me Up
2018
UK&
Dir: Rachel Maclean
ENGLISH
84 mins
released 2018
In Make Me Up, multimedia artist Rachel Maclean has created a world that is both seductive and dangerous; a place where surveillance, violence and submission are a normalised part of daily life. She tackles these contradictions head-on and never balks at pushing boundaries.
This darkly-comic film takes a satirical look at the contradictory pressures faced by women today. It examines how television and social media can be fun and expressive spaces to explore identity, but simultaneously a gilded prison that encourages women to conform to strict beauty ideals.
Siri wakes to find herself trapped inside a brutalist candy-coloured dreamhouse. Despite the cutesy decor, the place is far from benign, and she and her inmates are encouraged to compete for survival while being watched over by surveillance cameras, 24/7.
The Guardian
"A surrealist critique and freaky satirical nightmare on the subject of feminism, female body image and social media, with something of Lewis Carroll, Terry Gilliam and maybe a little of Clio Barnard in its subversive use of lip-sync."
Sight and Sound
"A savage satire on the systemic misogyny of historical narrative, with European art history as her exemplar. Her detailed and neo-baroque art design, in a saccharine pastel palette, looks like candy floss exploded onto the screen. Levels of flair match excess in her exposé of sinister ideologies embedded in the mini and maxi narratives of gender and beauty."
The Financial Times
"Incendiary. Comprises all of western art, but also plastic surgery, gender roles, surveillance, the way art is bought and sold, eating disorders, suffragettes and force-feeding, vlogging, Girl Power, manufactured pop and reality TV."
