Review: Charli xcx Is (Still) the Moment
With cameos from Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott, the ambitious mockumentary is now A24’s fastest-selling limited release.
Influenced by Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, The Moment stars Charli xcx in a fictionalized dramatization as herself, capturing what it’s like to become a huge success overnight. The film also features performances by Rosanna Arquette as a no-nonsense record label executive and Alexander Skarsgård as a goofy director with a dark side who is filming the show for a concert film. Internet personalities Anthony Fantano and theswiftologist also have cameos as themselves.
Aidan Zamiri’s directorial debut, The Moment is not a concert film, nor is it a documentary. The fictionalized Charli grapples with how far she’s willing to sell out and cash in on her success. It satirizes how silly yet real everything gets: When she’s approached by fictional bank Howard Stirling to market credit cards to a younger, queer demographic, Charli thinks it’s a bit ridiculous, but she goes along with it anyway. Her lackadaisical attitude to the commitment eventually causes problems for her. The Moment reveals how “making it” creates a slew of new problems, and how hard it becomes not to lose sight of where you came from.
Mainstream success is something most pop stars strive toward, and Charli finally achieved it with her sixth album, especially after she tweeted “kamala IS brat.” But in the eye of the storm, she can’t appreciate the moment because she suddenly has a lot more people making demands of her, while receiving much more scrutiny and criticism from people who didn’t even know who she was before Brat. After entering the spotlight, she’s pressured into milking it for all that it’s worth, while wondering what she’ll do next.
More tension comes from director Johannes (Skarsgård), who doesn’t get Brat and wants to commercialize it, making it palatable for a family-friendly audience, which would alienate her core fan base. Skarsgård delivers the best performance (other than Charli), but the entire film is camp to Charli’s followers.
The Moment is a funny yet vulnerable satire, a perfect companion to Brat, with songs like “Sympathy is a knife” and “Girl, so confusing.” Charli is well aware that her critics want her to move on from Brat—you have to wonder how many people have left “girl, move on” in her comments—so it’s brat to keep sarcastically beating the dead horse. Charli and Zamiri could have gone the tried-and-true path of making another concert film or documentary, like Madonna’s Truth or Dare or Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, but they decided to do something riskier and more interesting in The Moment, satirizing its star and the brat summer phenomenon.