The Beauty In ‘Her Private Hell’ Is A Glittering ’60s & ’70s Dreamscape

The dystopian universe of “Her Private Hell” is one of harsh fluorescent lighting that hair and makeup designer Louise Bruun had to account for when developing each character’s signature looks. The film follows Elle (Sophie Thatcher), Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), and Hunter (Kristine Froseth) on a dreamlike journey across movie sets, nightclubs, and seedy hotel rooms. When faced with three female leads of similar age and stature—all of which showed up to pre-production with brunette hair—Bruun’s challenge was differentiating their looks. “In a fashion shoot you turn up with your kit and you're like, ‘Okay, what are we doing today?’ And I think that's what I have to offer, that I'm very flexible and used to pulling rabbits out of my hat,” Bruun says. 

On set, one such rabbit was an eyeshadow palette turned foundation of sorts used to differentiate universes. Metallic skin becomes a calling card for the Candy Floss girls—the on-screen characters the three main characters play. Bruun opted for Clinadh Cosmetics' Dragon Fruit eyeshadow palette to create the illusion of metallic skin. “It's these new eyeshadows that have really high pigmentation and change color. You think it's blue but then it's actually green,” Bruun says. “So you have a good moisturizer in the face and then you just brush it on.”

Bruun worked around the harsh lighting in the Candy Floss universe where she noticed pink, purple, and red undertones worth drawing out in the makeup. “If I use green on the eyes, you would never see it. A pink would just melt with the light. So I'm constantly thinking about things that have a reflective surface that the light will hit,” Bruun says. “The Candy Floss Girls have these eyes that are put on [top of] a very shiny surface, so when they move it's meant to reflect.”

Bruun got her start doing makeup for high fashion magazines, where her job took her behind the scenes of Paris and London Fashion Week. She credits her hair expertise to watching the hairdressers on her shoots and observing their technique. After working with Nicolas Winding Refn on “Pusher” (1996), the makeup-turned-hair artist has been a frequent collaborator of the director.

Refn, whose most well-known arthouse drama, “The Neon Demon,” satirized the fashion industry, steered Bruun toward high fashion iconography. “[Refn] loves this perfect kind of look, so a lot of my references were from fashion, but also old cinemas, like ‘Inferno,’” Bruun says. The makeup artist also cites the 1973 psychological horror film “Don't Look Now” as a key aesthetic reference, drawing from classic horror movies that brought “clear expression” and “big eyes” into their worldbuilding. “I love old ’70s horror films like ‘Susperia’ and all those Dario Gento movies… the whole genre from that time,” says Bruun.

For the emotionally repressed protagonist of “Her Private Hell,” Bruun wanted to create a contrast between the perfect image that is introduced to the viewer and the raw self concealed beneath the surface. To achieve this effect, Elle begins the film with clear, flawless skin that shines through Thatcher's foundation. For Bruun, creating a perfect beauty look starts well before makeup, requiring Thatcher to see beauticians so that her skin was in its best condition before she sat in the makeup chair. When Elle begins to break down in the latter half of the film, her makeup look breaks down with it. “It started to naturally happen in the first scene where she's fighting with Dominique,” Bruun recalls. “Her skin would heat up and she would have real tears that would blur the whole makeup.”

To recreate the look of a teary-eyed breakdown for later scenes, Bruun pared down the foundation and mixed mascara with water to create the illusion of runny eyes, adorning her eyelids with a little bit of red eyeshadow. 

Elle’s hair look combined the actress’ natural hair with Brigitte Bardot inspiration. “She had this typical ’60s look where you have a small piece [of hair] framing the face [and] this fringe that goes into these small pieces. So Sophie had that naturally and I just thought great, let's just really go with this. So she just had a small trim and we would sort of just tongue her hair a little bit every day. So that was actually quite easy."

The youngest of the Candy Floss girls, Hunter, was written to look more playful and immature. “She has silver on her eyes and things, but with the light and all it just comes across as much more of a younger, playful character,” Bruun says. For the hair, Bruun lightened it blonder to create an “icy” Scandinavian look, in juxtaposition with Elle and Dominique’s domineering darker tones. “Christine turned up with a bit of brown hair. So it was like ‘My god, something needs to happen here to make them stand out.’ So we made [Christine] a little bit more blonde and gave Sophie a bit of a tone of red to try and make her more red.”

Elle’s father, the Leather Man, required an intensive makeup look of his own. Initially, Refn advised minimal makeup for the character on account of how little his face would be seen, but Bruun insisted on doing a test shot with makeup and found that a glittery face elevated the eeriness. “He was painted black all over,” Bruun says, describing how she would apply the product in the ears and neck. “The black makeup would make him fade away in the darkness and the stones would light his face. He would still be hidden but you would have this feeling of a diamond face underneath.”