1 month ago
15
January 23, 2026 — 1:20pm
While watching Marty Supreme in the cinema last week, I was delayed in appreciating the performance that won Timothée Chalamet his Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe awards. And it’s because I was distracted by his face. When it feels like every face crossing the screen is buffed to a high-gloss finish, seeing Chalamet with a monobrow and a scattering of acne scars – alongside a parade of pale, ruddy, freckled, ageing co-stars he shares screen time with – was so thrilling I felt compelled to break my strict “no talking in the cinema” rule to mutter, “These faces!” More than once.
It’s not just a wardrobe choice for Marty, either; it’s a narrative one. Those nicks and imperfections suggest a character who has been in fights, who lives in the friction of the real world rather than the vacuum of a green room. And who’s performing the role of confident man but is really just a boy.
It feels like the sands under the beauty feedback loop are slowly shifting, after more than a decade of skewing towards a strange visual flatness where individuality is softened and features are “optimised” until every lead actor looks like they were 3D-printed in the same lab. Where leading ladies in romcoms wake up in a full face of make-up and all the visual edges of a person have been sanded back to a glossy sheen. Where everyone looks expensive and almost no one looks interesting.
This is why Marty Supreme feels like such a necessary course correction. The film’s power lies in its refusal to participate in aesthetic conformity. Casting director Jennifer Venditti – the woman responsible for the “cinema of real life” in everything from Euphoria to the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and Good Time — has said that “it always starts with the face”.
For Marty Supreme, she and director Josh Safdie were obsessed with finding “timeless” faces, the kind that haven’t been touched by modern dentistry or the “frozen” quality of 21st-century cosmetic tweaks. (Or, what the internet often calls “iPhone face”.)
We’re seeing this same hunger on the small screen, too. Take the breakout success of Heated Rivalry. Much of its magnetism comes from watching performers like Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, who don’t yet carry the heavy visual shorthand of global celebrity. Their faces aren’t pre-loaded with algorithmic approval, so there is a “first-day-of-school” energy to watching them navigate their characters’ stories.
The most successful prestige TV of the past few years has leaned into this texture. Think of Industry, where the camera treats the cast’s faces like high-frequency trading floors – all twitching eyelids, flushed cheeks and the visible cost of a three-day bender. These shows succeed because they allow their actors to look stressed, not just “TV stressed”. Or The Bear, which famously treats Jeremy Allen White’s face like a road map of stress, refusing to hide the dark circles or the sweat-clogged pores that come with a kitchen shift. The visual anxiety is the point.
It’s a jarring contrast to the dominant beauty culture of the last decade — the high-velocity, hyper-feminine look made famous by women on reality television. In this realm, high cheekbones, heavy injectables, and a singular, frozen jawline are the aesthetic goal. The lack of movement is so desirable, one Real Housewife once told another, during an argument, “Your face looks like a trampoline with eyes!” – then claimed it was a compliment.
Think of the actors who endure: in The Bridges of Madison County, Clint Eastwood revs his pick-up truck down a dusty road and steps out looking more like one of its tyres than a typical Hollywood heartthrob. It tells us everything we need to know about him, his life, his priorities. He represents a world of possibility for Meryl Streep’s housewife.
When a face is permanently camera-ready, the emotional stakes flatten. Vulnerability becomes harder to access when the forehead can’t furrow; transformation becomes impossible to believe when the actor looks like they’ve never encountered a bad night’s sleep.
This isn’t a moral crusade against cosmetic procedures – my next Botox appointment is scheduled for a few days from now. But it is an argument for range. It’s a plea to let our screens reflect something more than a singular, expensive idea of desirability.
Audiences are more visually literate than we give them credit for. We can tell when a face has been optimised for engagement rather than emotion. When Marty Supreme or Heated Rivalry breaks through the noise, it’s because they remind us what it feels like to look at a stranger and not immediately know their whole deal.
In a world of total uniformity, showing us something real might just force us to look beyond the surface and get closer to the story underneath.
