Daisy: The Story of a Facelift
1983 · 57m · Canada
Directed by Michael Rubbo
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, provocative
Daisy de Bellefeuille undergoes a facelift to counter middle age, while patients and professionals discuss why people alter their appearance through cosmetic surgery.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Rubbo could've made a gaudy provocation about vanity, but instead he does something weirder—he treats cosmetic surgery with the same philosophical weight as a Godard essay, letting the contradiction between documentary objectivity and intimate vulnerability just sit there, unresolved, which is exactly why it works.
A masterclass in observational restraint: Rubbo positions the camera as witness rather than judge, letting the formal distance between Daisy's private body and public testimony create the film's entire argument about aging and visibility—the kind of structural rigor that only reads as 'simple' because it's been perfectly thought through.
The revelation is that Rubbo never shows the surgery itself; instead he builds unbearable intimacy through reaction shots and silence, trusting that the space *between* Daisy's face before and after—the conversations, the hesitations—matters infinitely more than the medical procedure, and that one withholding choice reframes what the whole film is actually about.