Over 150,000 New Zealanders live with hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, with many suffering in silence. Alex Casey talks to the filmmaker looking to change that.
Through a small ruby velour curtain, a single elegant hand emerges. The long manicured nails have been filed to a sharp point, and painted to match the blood red surroundings. But as the palm rotates into position and hits the light, there’s a noticeable slickness to the skin. “You have been brought here to assess your experience of this handshake,” the adjudicator reads, as large droplets start to form around the knuckles. “Please reach through and initiate shake.”
The hand in question belongs to filmmaker Gabrielle Maffey, who has lived with hyperhidrosis, or excessive sweating, since she was a child. Estimated to affect at least 3% of the population, or around 150,000 New Zealanders, the condition causes people to sweat uncontrollably, regardless of the temperature or their levels of physical exertion. For Maffey, the hyperhidrosis manifests in her hands, but it can also affect the underarms, face, scalp and feet.
Gabrielle Maffey, director and star of Gloss Finish. (Photo: Felix Wang)
To be entirely clear, this isn’t the occasional clammy-feeling palm. “I thought it was just me, because it is comically excessive,” says Maffey. “Basically my hands – not all the time, but at any time, and I can’t choose the time – are completely dripping.” Her earliest memory of her sweaty hands was trying to use the monkey bars as a kid. “I would slip off, but I thought it was just a thing that my body did… I just used different parts of my body to get a better grip.”
It was at high school where the shame around hyperhidrosis started to take hold. Maffey discovered a giant community of people on Reddit suffering from excessive sweating, and began to experiment with a litany of “cures” recommended by strangers. “I was desperate to be normal to the point that it was weird.” she says, recalling filling her school blazer pockets with cornflour to dip her hands into, and buying specialist deodorant that burnt her palms.
At the age of 12, she embarked on her most dangerous experiment find a cure. After reading instructions online, she took two oven trays and stole a 12 volt car battery from her dad’s workshop. Filling the trays with water and attaching the battery to the trays, Maffey then ran electric currents through her hands for 45 minutes in her closet, every night for four years. “It didn’t work, but it really spoke to the desperate lengths that we will go to assimilate.”
Maffey recreates the secret ritual of her teens. (Photo: Felix Wang)
Things came to a head when the car battery eventually exploded in her bag when she was 16, the sulfuric acid ruining her uniform and mufti clothes and bringing her secret out into the open. “I broke down and told my mum and my dad, and as you can imagine, the reaction was pretty surprised,” she says. “It obviously sounds really extreme, but because the gold at the end of the rainbow was having normal hands, I would have done anything at that age.”
Now, nearly a decade later, Maffey is taking her sweaty hands out of her pockets and putting them in the spotlight in her new short film Gloss Finish. Premiering in the Show Me Shorts festival, the highly stylized documentary was born out of her feelings of shame around her “leaky devil hands” as a teenager. Instead of combating her hands with all manner of internet cures, Maffey instead meets other young New Zealanders who share ”the glistening plight”.
Filled with rich purples and deep reds and drawing inspiration from the likes of Death Becomes, Heavenly Creatures, Eraserhead and other David Lynch movies, the film reframes hyperhidrosis as something luxurious and glossy. “What I found with having a very visibly leaky body was that I would withdraw the more expressive, campy, colorful parts of my personality. This film, because it is so stupid, campy, colorful and glamorous, is me opening up that part of myself.”
Maffey’s “leaky devil hands” in the spotlight. (Photo: Felix Wang)
Maffey went as far as recreating the famed closet electrocution set-up, even filming a parody version of Desperate Housewives, the show she would binge as tiny electrical currents pulsed through her palms. Even more ambitious than attempting that on a six day shoot with a tiny budget was the film’s key challenge: learning to tango with a partner. “It was genuinely so scary to try. It’s so vulnerable to do something so sincere that involves physical touch.”
Without giving away too much about what happens, Maffey says the process of turning her private insecurity into a piece of art has been cathartic. “Before making this film, this was something I would have never talked about with anyone,” she says. “Now I’ll tell anyone who will listen.” And while she hopes the documentary reaches the thousands of New Zealanders living with hyperhidrosis, she also says there’s something in Gloss Finish for everyone.
“Sweat is something everyone can relate to, because even if you’re not clinically sweaty, you’ve been in an environment where you don’t want to be as sweaty as you are,” she says. “The film is for people who feel weird. The film is for people who feel embarrassed about little insecurities, and keep them private because they feel too silly to talk about to other people.” And after so many years of her own secret shame, Maffey is ready to share her sweaty hands with the world.
“I’m excited to unleash the gloss.”
Gloss Finish is a part of the Show Me Shorts festival, running across Aotearoa this October