We Need To Talk About J. Law's Hair in Mother!
In the weeks since the release of mother! - director Darren Aronofsky's groundbreaking, wild, polarizing film - much has been written about the film's intention. But while movie critics and Twitter users who think they're movie critics have been busy analyzing the film's minutiae, the one thing everyone should have been paying attention to has slipped by the wayside. We're of course talking about Jennifer Lawrence's hair.
Lawerence's hair in mother! is a work of art. From the very first scene I was hypnotized by the unusual Earthy brown base with golden highlights, and the ultra-long, virginal waves. So I called up Félix Larivière, the film's lead hair designer, to try and understand more about Lawrence's visually striking hair. After all, everything in mother! is more than what it seems.
"We chose for her something very natural, with as much length as possible, with no visible cut," says Larivière, who used a 22-inch wig on Lawrence. "Something like a girl who has virgin hair, no cut, no dyed hair - nothing but natural." Eagle-eyed moviegoers might have noticed how Lawrence's hair color seemed to change throughout the film. Larivière attributes that to the expert lighting. "The color was blonde - but very natural. The thing was, we didn’t want Jennifer's hair which is usually a modern blonde. When we had the wig in the trailer versus the stage it looked totally different. So we worked with the [director of photography] to find the right color." The end result is something that reads woody brown in some scenes and a bright, sunny blonde in others, depending on the environment swarming Lawrence's character.
The other thing to take note of is the style. Lawrence's hair in the mother! starts off down in silky waves, which Larivière describes as "very Mother Earth angelic." Even when she twists it up to work on the house, it's done so in a very loose, natural way. By the end of the film - in that much-discussed third act - her now-darker hair is thrown into a stiff updo. This was entirely on purpose. With only three wigs to work with, Larivière and his team had to be careful not to totally destroy one while filming that chaotic sequence. He kept both the wig hair and Lawrence's hair healthy on set by using a combination of Oribe styling products - the superfine hairspray and gel-serum - and his own line called Felix Haircare, which is launching in the next few months.
So while you may have left mother! utterly confused, angry, or inspired - I left with hair color inspiration for years to come.
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