Exte: Hair Extensions

I came into this movie expecting it to do something fairly predictable: to hire only incredibly beautiful women and then deploy a plot explicitly designed to chastise women for all their vanity. It did not do this at all. At all. If anything, Exte was remarkably respectful of the work done by stylists and of the very complex business and social relationships that exist in a salon. The protagonist is an apprentice, and there is no question that she works incredibly hard at many skills: the difficult craft of cutting hair, the constant research and training demanded by ever-evolving trends, even the responsibility of caring for one's clients and respecting not only their investment, but their very personal relationship to their hair as part of how they present themselves to the world. The film featured a large cast of women and did a remarkably fair job examining the salon as a business environment of real value and complex relationships that is run almost entirely by women.

I wouldn't go so far as to use the word "feminist" for Exte; there's a lot of weird abortion shaming. But by the end of the film the lesson learned by Yuko is not that she should be chastised for vanity, but that she recognize the value of hard work and solid relationships, so I was pretty happy with this.

Then there's the plot. I'll see if I can summarize it and if I can communicate exactly where Exte and I disagree on the real crime here. The hair extensions gone mad came from a woman who was kidnapped and used for organ harvest. I know what you're thinking: they harvested her hair for extensions at the same time. Nope. Not at all. I know what else you're thinking: the extensions will get their vengeance on the harvesters. Also no. They are, as far as we know, happily harvesting away somewhere.

Here's what happens: a pervy coroner shaves her head like he does all the corpses because he has a hair fetish. When her hair grows back he decides she's just magnificent, steals her corpse, and slowly fills his apartment with her hair. Eventually he sells some as extensions and things get violent. Finally, he is sliced into three small parts by the extensions and becomes a shoe, head, hair, hat creature that is harmless because he can only scuttle around making small squeaking sounds. [Oh, Spoiler Alert] I tried to find a picture of this, but no such luck.

As far as I can tell, the moral of the movie is not about organ harvest at all, but rather: Don't be pervy.

I watched the movie because I got extensions yesterday. There is something inimitably creepy about having someone else's hair on your head. The hair has a wholly different texture than my own and feels foreign. Exte wholly disagrees with me on this point. There is nothing wrong with extensions at all, unless you buy them from some weird guy.

[Photo: Exte features a lot of tongue hair growth, which I think is supposed to gross you out because of hair-in-mouth aversion. A lot of Exte relies on the viewer being grossed out by hair. Consequently, no one who has ever painted, swept, or cleaned a salon has anything to fear from this film.]