It’s all through the film’s third act that Cassie’s above-neck theatrics get to a fever pitch. She attends a bachelor bash dressed as a sweet striper with cartoonish makeup and vibrant, acid-dazzling hair. “It is really a bit of The Joker reigning mayhem,” says hairstylist Daniel Curet, who worked to bring Fennell’s vision for this scene to life by splicing two distinct candy-colored fantasy wigs collectively to obtain the ideal combine of fringe, texture, and shades. To include a sure grittiness, he razored out the finishes and utilised Ouai’s Wave Spray to increase some sticky hold and spike to the finishes. Inspired by what Cassie would be undertaking in that scene, Wells developed a blowup doll-impressed “vast-eyed, comprehensive-lipped” make-up search, participating in up the “unhappy eyeliner” by layering on metallic blue eyeliner, double stacks of falsies on the higher and lessen lashes, and then overlining the lips to “Joker”-like result with MAC Retro Matte lipstick in fuchsia-red All Fired Up. “She’s spiraling,” emphasizes Wells. “It truly is not supposed to be very.”
From a splendor standpoint, Promising Youthful Lady would not just use the electrical power of presentation in storytelling, charting the sea variations of a character in a palpable, visually-stirring way, but it also delivers provocative commentary on the sinister trap of the male gaze. At its most playful, this manifests in the “Blow Position Lips Makeup Tutorial” (showcasing a cameo from Fennel as a beauty influencer) that Cassie watches to generate a shiny, cherry-pink lip. Then, there is the scene in which Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays a self-proclaimed “good guy” named Neil and tells Cassie how fairly she is in advance of mansplaining what would make her most attractive to him.
“Why are you wearing all that makeup, do you intellect me asking?” he presses. “I by no means understood why females don so a lot makeup. It is really like you are so a great deal extra stunning with no it. It truly is like fellas you should not even like that kind of things, you know? It really is this soul-sucking program meant to oppress women and it really is fucked up. I want to see you. The genuine you.” Luckily, when Cassie does clearly show him the “serious” her, there is catharsis, and lots of it, in her having back the gaze. It is really just one occasion of several that proves for Cassie, make-up is equally armor and a weapon.