“Everyone wants something they don’t have. It’s the principle of desire,” says Clara Cullen, the Buenos Aires-born director of Beauty Is a Form of Genius,the second film in the weekly NOWNESS series #DefineBeauty. “I’m fascinated by the idea of changing your face and body. We like to please with our looks and I don't find that immoral or shallow.” An early encounter with 'carnal' French artist Orlan, who uses her face as a surgical canvas, left an imprint on the filmmaker. “I realized plastic surgery is a performing art and while Orlan subverts it—she had two horns popping out of her head—it’s still using the same tools,” she says, also citing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as inspiration. Scripted in collaboration with novelist Maxine Swann, Cullen herself provides the evocative monologue, intertwining four stories that take in the universal human conditions of self-esteem, vanity, insecurity and temptation. Long blonde hair, a chiseled bone structure and surgically enhanced breasts and lips depict an Argentinian beauty prototype. “Plastic surgery is in my culture,” says Cullen, who returned to her home city to interview the cast, which included Charlotte Caniggia, daughter of Argentina’s celebrated World Cup hero, the former footballer Claudio Caniggia. “Mario Testino has a joke about us: Why do Argentinians go outside during an electric storm? Because they think God is taking photos of them.”

The next in the #DefineBeauty series A Maximum Illusion: Creme Caramel premieres Tuesday May 20.