Fresh off a sold out arena tour in support of her Brat album and an excellent soundtrack album for the middling Wuthering Heights film, Charli XCX returns to the spotlight with The Moment, a black-comedy mockumentary film that follows her rehearsals for the Brat tour and the fallout of the 2024 “Brat summer” phenomenon.
Based on an original idea from Charli and written and directed by Aidan Zamiri, the director behind many of Charli’s videos during the Brat era, the film is a self-deprecating and speculative look at a reality in which the Brat phenomenon fails and Charli struggles to stay afloat.
Charli stars as herself, obviously, and is surprisingly good in her first lead role, managing to make it feel like she’s playing an actual character instead of just a slightly fictionalised version of herself. She masterfully communicates the stress that she is under and is a charismatic focal point for the film’s audience.
She is backed by a supporting cast of fictional characters played by Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette, Hailey Benton Gates, Jamie Demetriou, and Isaac Powell, amongst others. Skarsgård as Johannes, a director making a Brat tour concert film, is the standout of the supporting cast with a performance that is both hilarious and flamboyant without outshining Charli.
Gates’ turn as Charli’s creative director Celeste is also excellent, with a neurotic and tense performance that perfectly complements Charli’s own. Cameos from celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott are well utilised and help communicate to the viewer the stakes of Charli’s pursuit of success.
On the technical level, Zamiri’s writing and directing are incredibly competent for a feature directorial debut, and he shows virtuosity in his ability to balance a tense tone and atmosphere with incredibly humorous material and performances.
The film’s cinematography, provided by Sean Price Williams (Good Time, The Sweet East), helps greatly in establishing the film’s tense and comedic tone, with its grainy texture creating a gritty atmosphere and its handheld movement helping to both emphasise moments of humour and make the viewer feel as though they are an active part of the film’s drama. The sound design is also brilliant, making the film feel chaotic and overstimulating, reflecting the mental state of its protagonist.
Overall, The Moment manages to be an incredibly funny and enjoyable film while still offering deep and profound commentary on what it means to be an artist in the modern age, and it is sure to be a hit with both fans of Charli XCX’s music and viewers unfamiliar with her work.