The Basis of Make-Up follows Normalsatz as the second in a Heinz Emigholz trilogy "about three days in the recent past." Where Normalsatz was shot largely in New York (a nice place to visit but perhaps not to live?), The Basis of Make-Up is set in Belgium, "an unknown country through which everybody goes, but where nobody stays." The enigmatic narrative, dated October 9, 1979, deals with an American who looks Persian and thus makes a living as a rug dealer in Belgium. His world consists of two realms: the bright rooms of his male employees, and his own gloomy digs, which he shares with two female friends and a male alcoholic. There, as the director puts it, "blatant voyeurism prevails.... The characters obviously do not take the trouble to try and fool each other, except when they fool themselves. Romantic love is turned into a masochistic institution, its inevitable form of representation being that of comedy."