Move over Spinal Tap … The Moment has arrived
The Moment is a satirical mockumentary starring British pop star Charlie xcx as an exaggerated version of herself navigating the vagaries of stardom and branding during her Brat album era.
Movies about famous pop stars have rarely been huge box-office draws. The younger generation of movie buffs are more likely to wait to see movies on their phones or on streaming services, anyway.
This would be a pity with The Moment, a mockumentary aimed for their viewing and which really should be seen on a big screen. The film, which screened to captivated audiences in Sundance and then Berlin, follows a fictitious version of British pop star Charli xcx, who had experienced success with her first five albums – and then came her top-selling 2024 album, Brat.
After watching The Moment online I had a second viewing in a cinema in Berlin, and the difference is astounding. Directed by Glaswegian Aidan Zamiri, who had made many of Charli’s music videos, the film is full of visual flourishes, including Charli dancing wildly under strobe lights as well as flashing neon-coloured production company logos, which can only really be appreciated on the big screen.
We watch as a fictitious Charli embarks on a concert tour at the end of the so-called Brat summer of 2024 when she had been thrust into the mainstream. The singer plays a more volatile and insecure version of her famous self as she navigates her way through an array of controlling characters. The Moment is a satirical expose of the music industry and the vagaries of stardom and branding.
Why did Charli xcx, born Charlotte Aitchison, want to make the film for which she is not only an actor and musician, but also a producer and co-screenwriter?
“I had been through an extreme transition in my work life where for years I was known as a kind of pop artist who is on the fringes with a very loyal, exclusively gay fan base,” Charli, 33, responds in Berlin.
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“After my album Brat I was opened up to this entirely new, much larger audience, which I was so grateful and thankful for. But with it came this feeling of losing control of something that I had really been able to control for so long.
“When you release art into the world and it reaches a wide audience – and this was the widest audience I’d ever reached – their opinions begin to be put on the work, which begins to morph and change in its meaning.
‘I am quite an emotional and volatile artist, as many artists are’
“Obviously, that’s just what comes with releasing art, but I’d never experienced it at this scale before. It left me thinking a lot about how we communicate art and at what point art leaves your own hands and goes into the audience’s hands. I felt that I had a lot of things to say.
“I also think I am quite an emotional and volatile artist, as many artists are. I found elements of that journey quite difficult, and I felt that making this film was a way of me of not only commenting on art, but also me dealing with my very personal experience as an artist and how I felt in the music industry.”
In The Moment, Alexander Skarsgard’s arrogant music director Johannes plays on Charli’s insecurities and railroads her into getting his way in commodifying her when making a concert film for Amazon Music. The comedic villain of the piece, he bickers: “Some of these elements will turn people off. We don’t want to offend anyone.”
When her creative director Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates) tells Johannes that Charli is singing about cocaine, Johannes asks: “Literally or metaphorically?” Celeste respond: “What’s metaphorical cocaine?”
“Charli in the film decides to set herself free of Brat, to kill Brat,” Charli xcx notes. “We were aware that this film was probably the sort of full stop at the end of an album campaign, in the real world too. We were very interested in playing with interacting with the world around us and operating in an insular way within a film.
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“Also, we’ve always been very interested in the lifespan of art, the tension of staying too long, of overstaying your welcome in a cultural space. Especially within pop music, that can really happen, because fans are so feverish for the next thing, the next album, the next version of you. So, making this film was quite cathartic, because I was able to channel a lot of my frustration that I may have felt in the real world into these heightened scenarios that I was experiencing within the film.”
As well as the hilarious scene-stealing Skarsgard, there are other big names in the film, including Rosanna Arquette as a no-nonsense record executive. Kylie Jenner has also attracted attention for her cameo as a fictionalised version of herself, who offers advice to a dishevelled Charli when they meet at an Ibiza spa.
“I couldn’t believe that Kylie was down to do this, and we’re so grateful,” says Zamiri, who had worked on the outlandish press tours for A Complete Unknown and Marty Supreme, both starring Jenner’s beau Timothee Chalamet. “Kylie was incredible, really an incredible actor.”
As for Charli, Zamiri commends her, noting how they became “extremely close” while making the film.
“Charli was able to put herself in such a vulnerable position by just being so honest and being able to appear to be an unreliable character,” says Zamiri.
After also releasing a soundtrack album for Wuthering Heights, Charli is keen to continue with high-profile movie roles. She has already appeared in a string of movies — including Erupcja, which she co-wrote and produced; and has had two more films at Sundance, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and The Gallerist starring Natalie Portman.
She also co-stars in the upcoming US horror film Faces of Death with Australia’s Dacre Montgomery.
The big news is that Sydney-born Milly Alcock, soon to be Supergirl, will star with Charli in Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike’s Untitled Kyoto Project, which is being produced by Charli’s company Studio365. It follows three friends meeting in Kyoto only to see their holiday turn into a nightmare as Charli’s character is possessed by a tortured spirit.
Entertainment Company A24 announced at the end of January that the film had become its fastest-selling limited release. The adventurous Charli xcx is now truly having a moment.
The Moment opens in cinemas on March 5.
Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema. She is a voting member of the Lumiere Awards.
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