Rouge
Belle is a lonely, biracial dress-shop clerk in Montreal whose life revolves around an almost devotional obsession with skincare and the soothing rituals of beauty influencers. When her glamorous, estranged mother Noelle dies suddenly in Southern California, Belle travels south to settle the estate and finds a life full of debts, secrets, and unanswered questions.
Drawn by a pair of red shoes, Belle is pulled into La Maison de Meduse, the same lavish, cultish spa her mother was devoted to, a place that promises transcendent beauty at a cost that keeps rising. As she sinks deeper into its mirrors and rituals, the line between rejuvenation and self-erasure dissolves, and Belle confronts the demons on the other side of the glass and the complicated love and envy that bound her to her mother.
A surreal, Snow White-tinged horror fable, Mona Awad's Rouge is a savage, dreamlike satire of the beauty industry, grief, and mother-daughter longing.
Lonely, skincare-obsessed woman drawn into a sinister beauty cult after her mother's death.
Belle's glamorous, estranged mother, whose death sets the story in motion.