Painting Faces: The ‘X’ Trilogy and Its Reverence for Makeup

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The X trilogy is ever a love letter to cinema. Though the first installment is built around a cluster of young people making pornography, it still highlights its love to the craft of filmmaking by having characters directly refer to the art and also by being set in the late-70s and dressed up in that era’s horror aesthetic. While various crafts are highlighted, the series makes a lot of room for the art of painting faces for a collection of effects. With MaXXXine, the third installment in the Ti West and Mia Goth franchise, now gracing the silver screen, the love for classic eras of cinema is ever palpable. Within that is the love for all things cinema makeup, beauty and FX.

X was perhaps unassuming when it snuck up on 2022 audiences with its distinct 70s look. It didn’t at all lack period appropriate hairstyles and eyewear. Though Bobby-Lynn (Brittany Snow) is built as the standout bombshell, it’s Maxine (Mia Goth) who steals the styled spotlight, us first seeing her under the lights of a vanity mirror. The denim clad farm girl is almost never without her signature powder blue eyelids, even as she takes a solo dip in a dangerous pond. And where the beauty makeup stops, Maxine’s freckles begin, meant to be real though applied meticulously to Goth before the actress stepped in front of the camera.

Speaking to Bloody Disgusting in 2022, trilogy hair and makeup department head, Sarah Rubano discussed the process of creating the looks with the detail-oriented director. “Maxine and her freckles and her eyeshadow […] I just worked with Ti back and forth. He said, ‘Listen, I want to make them beautifully colorful. I want you to lean into the aesthetic here.’”

It’s the beauty makeup that distinguishes the double-triple-quadruple franchise roles of chameleon, Goth. But then there’s the aged Pearl hiding in plain sight. At the time of the first film in the series, there’s almost no reason to suspect that the creepy old lady at the farmhouse is anyone but an actress with thinning hair. But it’s Goth in yet another costume. Setting up what would end up being Goth led follow ups, the film used makeup to keep her in plain sight and lay the foundation of connection that would hold the series together. Where X could have started and stopped at 70s hair and gore FX, it leaned further into its reverence for the art of filmmaking by allowing different types of makeup to shine. Framed by the velvety lyrics of “Landslide,” Pearl is seen touching her own aged skin surrounded by vintage makeup packaging. Shortly thereafter, a youthful Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) is seen getting painted up for her turn in front of the camera.

Returning quickly as a younger Pearl, Goth comes back into frame in the second feature with a completely different look. With makeup (and perhaps color grading), Goth’s skin is warmer and deeper, the freckles washed away, and her face dressed in darkened lashes and a hot lip. Pearl is fresh faced with pops of color, and one of her big moments has her stained with running mascara. (Though it has ancient origins, the products that propelled Maybelline and Rimmel in the 1910s were early versions of mascara made from petroleum jelly and charcoal. They were messy).

Pearl is a completely different sort of movie, shedding the aesthetic of a 70s slasher for a sparkly classic Hollywood look with plot elements evocative of The Wizard of Oz. Pearl is in technicolor, dropping the muted blues and cool-toned freckles for pinky cheeks and opaque lip color. Goth’s reappearance is buoyed not just by her acting ability, but by Rubano and company’s artful work to give her a completely different look, thereby distinguishing the characters.

Wrapping the trilogy comes MaXXXine which brings back Goth in her original role as Maxine, this time as an 80s broad looking to paint over the version of herself she left at the bloody farmhouse. As Hollywood Maxine, she is arguably someone completely new, having committed more fully to her ruthless nature and being adorned with bleached hair that she lets set into natural waves. The signature blue shadow is gone, her face now painted with a less hastily applied gun metal eye. But her looks don’t start and stop here. Where all three installments in the franchise are about a love for film, leaning on meta-elements, MaXXXine further highlights the spectacle by having Maxine prepare for a studio picture that echoes her reality with a fundamentalist reaction to satanism. Goth, who prepared for X by sitting for a life cast to be made into Pearl, is seen as Maxine sitting for a life cast to prepare for her movie role in The Puritan II. And it pays off, not just in-world but for more meta gags. “Real” heads roll, and a “fake” head is in the center of the feature’s closing shot, Maxine having gazed upon it in awe.

When we’re first introduced to her in X, Maxine is sitting at a makeup mirror. In MaXXXine, she’s seen applying her makeup similarly before her adult film shoot, and later with an airbrush to splash on a beauty look that ends up functioning as war paint. Makeup is treated with a reverence beyond just creating signature looks, but also by reveling in the technique to create character, beauty, and horror, all which hold the real movie and the in-world one together.