This review is based on a screening from the Sundance Film Festival. The Moment will be released on January 30.
From first-time feature film director Aidan Zamiri – known for his music videos with Charli XCX – The Moment captures the fictitious aftermath of the British pop singer’s monumental success in 2024 with her smash-hit album, Brat. The film has an alluring energy and numerous wryly funny moments as it circles the malformed question of what comes next for the music megastar with an anxiety that fuels its aesthetic approach. The resultant story is one of a celebrity fearing her own oversaturation – a surprisingly vulnerable and self-critical starting point. Unfortunately, despite its occasional strengths, The Moment ironically overstays its welcome.
Brat Summer, with its now-iconic neon green, was everywhere all at once, a rocket ship to stardom that The Moment recaps via news montage for anyone unfamiliar. Once fans and outsiders alike are up to speed, numerous cameras follow XCX and her entourage in close quarters in the weeks leading up to her Brat tour in 2025, and the fictionalized creative skirmishes therein. It’s a mockumentary only in the most technical sense ;i.e., its characters acknowledge the cameras once or twice. However, the film is much better served if thought of as a straightforward drama shot with a handheld, voyeuristic gaze, or else you might go mad trying to figure out the logistics of each camera’s placement, and the “how” and “why” of it all (to say nothing of its lack of sit-down interviews). Either way, its raison d’etre is farcical at first, which is when the film is at its strongest. When it pivots towards more saccharine themes, told through traditional melodrama in its closing act, it’s much harder to stomach.
Early into the 103-minute runtime, it’s hard to shake the sense that Zamiri and XCX might be fans of the Safdie Brothers and Enter The Void director Gaspar Noé, whose respective claustrophobic conversations and strobing on-screen captions are deployed as primary tools. The movie’s texture is unrelenting, though its content seldom lives up. It takes a while for its awkward rhythms to finally settle, but after the umpteenth montage that establishes – or rather re-establishes – the premise, we’re off to the races. Boardroom executives make decisions on XCX’s behalf without her input, while her hilariously straitlaced manager Tim (Jamie Demetriou) tries to talk her into harebrained promotional schemes, including a ripped-from-Twitter gag about a Brat-themed queer credit card. It’s all wonderfully silly, and it comes wrapped in the chaos of XCX being ushered between events around London practically against her will.
The dry humor à la The Office (the UK original, that is) serves Zamiri’s style to a tee, while XCX slips effortlessly into a frayed and haggard version of herself, bringing her inmost insecurities to the surface amidst scenes of partying through the night. It’s a wonderful performance showcase at times, granting dramatic detours to supporting characters like XCX’s friend and creative director, Celeste (Safdie regular Hailey Benton Gates), whose nightclub vision for the tour is challenged by the ludicrous, faux-polite concert film director, Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård). A label hire, Johannes is hell-bent on sanding down the pop star’s image, making it more colorful and family-friendly, which leads to some comical butting of heads.
Celebrities show up in spades – Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott play exaggerated versions of themselves – so the verisimilitude of the project is never in question. Unfortunately, what remains questionable is its artistic point of view. In a sea of caricatures, XCX is practically the only three-dimensional human being, a person battling for agency while fighting off hordes of idiots at every turn. It verges on misanthropic, especially when she actually meets her fans; the mental health struggles of one of them are made the butt of an especially cruel joke. On the one hand, it’s commendable to see XCX – on whose idea the film was based – let the air out of her own celebrity image in the form of cinema; on the other hand, the result often feels like a distasteful act of brand management, despite its insistence that beneath all the glitz and glamor, XCX is ultimately human. She’s not too human, though; don’t forget, she’s still a creative genius, as The Moment insists, so any compromises she makes in a state of distress are secretly a five-dimensional chess scheme. If you can get on board with that conclusion, great; you’ve drunk the lime green Kool-Aid.
Zamiri’s visual approach may be a patchwork of other filmmakers, but in the most superficial sense, he knows exactly who to pull from, even if it doesn’t always cohere. The movie’s use of color is also remarkable, from the intense high-contrast and saturated palette that gives even the most luxurious spaces a grungy sensation, to the use of green in the color timing to induce a sickly feel as the film goes on, à la The Matrix or a Saw sequel. It’s as though XCX were being psychologically consumed, and even harmed, by her own success.
The visual pieces are all there; unfortunately, The Moment seldom assembles them in ways that make emotional sense. Important beats that define XCX’s character and creative trajectory feel entirely skipped, and vital information concerning a major third-act turn is presented in such an opaque fashion that the story becomes confounding. Eventually, it zips forward to an exhausting series of explanatory dramatic monologues to close things out, which neither gel with the preceding film nor serve XCX’s talents as a comedic actress. This zigzag ensures that The Moment ends on a bummer note when it ought to be at its most satirically sure-footed. It’s not terrible by any stretch, but you wouldn’t be blamed for questioning the point of it all once the credits finally roll.
feedzy_import_tag
About the Author
