The Moment: A Brat Identity Crisis

2024 was an undeniably huge year for Charli XCX. She released her blockbuster album Brat and finally broke through to the mainstream after years of building a career making avant-pop music that sat definitively left-of-center. Her once small, fiercely loyal and largely queer fanbase ballooned into a massive audience that included suburban dads and Kamala Harris. The Apple dance went mega viral, Fox News correspondents were discussing the implications of having a “brat summer”, and she was about to embark on her first international headlining arena tour. 

The stakes were as high as they had ever been for Charli and there is no doubt she was feeling the pressure of it all. We know this because it is the central idea behind her new movie The Moment, conceived by Charli herself and directed by Aidan Zamiri, his first feature after a prolific career in directing music videos. While the movie has been labeled as a mockumentary, Charli has said herself that it’s based on her own experiences during the Brat era. While the film offers insight into who Charli is behind the scenes and what she was feeling during her rise to the mainstream, you can’t help but wish that she and Zamiri had pushed their pop-industry commentary a little further.

The film opens with a kinetic, strobe-fueled montage of a sweaty Charli dancing alone on a dark dance floor cut with scenes of news and talk show hosts talking about the rapid ascent of Charli XCX and the chokehold of Brat on pop culture. The montage sets the tone for the whole movie; Charli is a woman on the verge. She has achieved everything she has ever wanted in her career and is beginning to flounder under the weight of the pressure and sky-high expectations. 

The story begins with her and her team planning an upcoming arena tour. She and her creative director, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), are developing a very on-brand show that features Charli doing what she does best: being a hot badass on stage while jumping/writhing around as she belts her party anthems. Everything is going according to plan until the label brings in a new, more established creative director, Johannes (a very funny Alexander Skarsgård) who has a different vision for what the show should be. He wants to make the show more family-friendly and palatable to all audiences, rather than catering to Charli’s established fanbase of queer tastemakers and clubrats. His vision is less Brat and more Katy Perry. Charli wants the tour to be successful, but she also wants to stay true to herself and her vision. She is a woman at a crossroads and her team, made up largely of yesmen, aren’t helping her. 

The clash between who she was before her mainstream success and who her label wants her to be now that she’s a household name drives the tension that carries the film through to its cathartic end. Along the way we get some entertaining cameos highlighting the pressure she is under. Rachel Sennott shows up to tell Charli that her partnership with a Brat-green credit card is embarrassing. Kylie Jenner runs into Charli at a luxury spa and encourages her to “go even harder” in the face of backlash. Even Julia Fox shows up at the end to give her two cents about Brat overexposure. 

Charli and Zamiri clearly had fun coming up with scenarios to put the fictionalized version of Charli in to highlight her identity crisis. Still, much of it rings true to what Charli herself was probably feeling during this time. In one of the most memorable moments from the movie, Charli goes in for a facial from a world-renowned esthetician, only to be told that she looks old and has such bad energy that the facialist refuses to do any work on her. Charli walks away from the interaction looking flustered and dejected. She can’t seem to do anything right, from planning a world tour to getting a facial at a spa, and she’s spiraling from the weight of being herself. It’s a  truly absurd scene that highlights the impossible expectations for young pop artists. They’re meant to be everything to everyone all while keeping a good attitude about it, and they’ll inevitably get criticized for failing to live up to those standards—even when they’re just trying to get a facial on vacation. 

I said earlier that this film is being advertised as a documentary, but that feels misleading. It’s less a laugh-out-loud funny industry-sendup like previous music mockumentaries (Spinal Tap, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping), and more of an introspective and cathartic exercise for Charli XCX coming to terms with how she is now perceived as an artist. It’s refreshing to see her drop her cool-girl persona (and her sunglasses) and express her real fears and anxieties about her lack of control and meaningful support from her team. Lorde was right: she really is just a young girl from Essex. 

Interest in this film will largely depend on how much of a Charli XCX fan someone is. I consider myself a lifelong Angel (going back to the True Romance days), and loved seeing my girl show us a more vulnerable and confused side of herself. The moments of her screaming alone resonated, because that’s just how it feels to be a woman in your 30s, regardless of fame-level. The Moment also gives an inside look into what goes on while an artist is trying to figure themselves out under massive scrutiny. While the film may not say anything groundbreaking about what it is like to be a pop star today, it still portrays a compelling portrait of the implications of massive success on a once-underrated pop maverick, and has some funny and moving moments that make it worth a watch for any pop fan. By the end, while there is still the feeling that Charli and Zamiri could have “gone harder” with the satire of being a pop star, that doesn’t take away from what is presented in the film. The Moment is a well-done if underbaked portrait of a time period when we all wanted to be 365 party girls, and it gives us fans something to hold us over while we wait for the next era.

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