Almost immediately after Charli XCX found herself caught up in the immense success of 2024’s “Brat summer,” she seemed determined to pivot away from music and into film. As if it would be her new sanctuary from the prison of pop stardom (even if it was pop stardom done her way). After all, XCX is notorious for engaging in what she calls a pendulum swing. In other words, every time she explores and conquers one thing, she wants to shift in the other direction. And this time around, that didn’t just mean another direction in music, but an entirely new medium for her altogether: film.
Oh sure, XCX had her previous dalliances with movies in the form of voicing animated characters (namely for 2015’s The Angry Birds Movie and 2019’s UglyDolls), but the level of output that has come after Brat is nothing short of miraculous. What’s more, as XCX points out herself in the lyrics of “Camera,” her latest single from Music, Fashion, Film, “Am I bein’ fuckin’ stupid/If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turning thirty-four?” The answer, thus far, has been an apparent “no,” for XCX has already managed to get eight films in the can: Erupcja, 100 Nights of Hero, Sacrifice, The Moment, I Want Your Sex, The Gallerist and a so far untitled Takashi Miike project. And while she might be the star of “only” two of those movies (Erupcja and The Moment), it’s an incredibly impressive feat for someone who had never previously acted in “that way” before.
But, of course, XCX has been making cinematic videos for over a decade now. And sometimes, that’s meant filching some of the iconic narratives/looks from beloved and/or cult cinema like Jawbreaker (see: “Break the Rules”), Thelma and Louise (see: “Doing It”), Clueless (see: “Fancy”) and a whole smattering of movies in one video: “1999” (which features references to Titanic, American Beauty, The Matrix and The Blair Witch Project [a blink-and-you’ll miss it moment]). So yes, in a lot of ways, XCX has been working up to this “transition” for years. And pop stardom itself has provided her with plenty of training, for it requires a fair amount of acting and leaning into a “persona” to be one.
In truth, XCX has often played “a version of herself” (long before The Moment) throughout her career as a musician, most notably for 2022’s Crash, where she really embraced the perception of what a female pop star is “supposed to be”: a total bitch. A “difficult diva” (otherwise known as: how men act on a day-to-day basis with little risk of a backlash). To be sure, it seemed she took some inspo from watching Madonna in Truth or Dare for that era. And then channeled it once again into The Moment, where she took “playing herself” to new heights. Even though she’s no stranger to doing that either, with cameos as “Herself” in the rebooted Gossip Girl (singing “Lightning” in the season two episode, “One Flew Over the Cuck’s Nest”—so her to be in an episode titled as such) and Benito Skinner’s Overcompensating (in the season one episode, “Boom Clap”).
And so, while XCX’s “pivot” into film might seem “sudden” to some people, the fact is she’s been building toward it for quite some time. This also includes her longstanding and long-publicized love of watching movies. Case in point, her telling Billboard in 2024 while sitting at The Castle Cinema in London, “I watch a lot of movies, like that is where I kind of find a lot of inspiration and where I kind of get my creative juices flowing, I suppose.” That’s no lie, for film has informed so much of her music (to the point where she’s even mastered how to create entire soundtracks for film, as was the case with Wuthering Heights). With Project X arguably being her “mood board” movie for the majority of her discography…but especially How I’m Feeling Now, and “anthems” being at the top of the list on serving Project X Soundtrack vibes.
What’s more, as a viewer, being able to disappear into the lives of the characters onscreen is likely as therapeutic for XCX as it is for any other cinephile. Like, say, Vincent Cassel (granted, famous actors tend to be the least cinephilic people—along with the various “executives” that control what gets greenlit at studios). But surely, since Cassel was worthy enough for David Cronenberg (having starred in both Eastern Promises and the far more atrocious The Shrouds), he was more than worthy enough for Charli, who also appears with him in the abovementioned movie, Sacrifice.
And it’s his mug that takes up most of the face time in the video for “Camera,” which is shot in black and white (as was “Rock Music”) for added “pretentious cinephile” cachet (or maybe just as a nod to La Haine, the film that gave Cassel his breakout role). Although once again directed by Aidan Zamiri, it’s Charli who appears to be in the director’s chair (foreshadowing, perhaps), coming in on a camera dolly while outfitted in Daniil Antsiferov at around the one-minute-thirteen-second mark after Cassel has had more than a few meltdowns over some of the various on-set snafus (e.g., a prop gun that’s supposed to go off, but presumably only makes the sound effect without triggering the blood splatter underneath Cassel’s shirt). The message being that, even when your personal life is suffering and/or the conditions of your professional life are less that satisfying, once the word, “Action!” is called, all of it is forced to melt away. Because everything—all that you have—must then be funneled into the part instead.
The escapism offered by the prospect of “being someone else” is enough to make Charli admit, “It makes me wanna throw my life away/‘Cause I feel different on the mark/Somethin’ new and undiscovered/And something kind of violent/Daring to fail and being ugly/I’m inspired and alive.” On the whole “being ugly” front, it’s true that XCX has so far chosen some very unglamorous and “makeup-free”-type roles (Erupcja being a prime example). Perhaps offering a much-needed reprieve from the rigors of needing to look “Hot In It” for every pop star-related affair.
In effect, it seems as if acting is to Charli what dancing is to Madonna. For, as the latter says on the opening track to Confessions II, “I Feel So Free,” “Sometimes I like to just hide in the shadows/Create a new persona/A different identity/I can be whoever I wanna be/Create a new persona.” In a similar (music) fashion (film), Charli insists, “I can be anything that I wanna be/And I can feel the things I don’t normally feel/Yeah, I can finally be totally honest.” Cassel appears to harbor the same sentiment as he keeps getting back into character no matter what fuckery is afoot. And when Charli herself positions her hand in the form of a “finger pistol” and shoots it at Cassel, he snaps back into action with the clapperboard.
As for the finger pistol gesture, Cassel himself will employ it after yet another botched take, mouthing the words to Charli’s lines, “It’s like I’m looking down the barrel of a gun (fucking shoot me)”—that parenthetical having a double meaning when a camera is involved, as The Drama (to make a film reference) cleverly played to perfection after Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) finds out his fiancée, Emma Harwood (Zendaya), was a would-be school shooter in her adolescence and, immediately after the revelation, they have to go to a photography studio.
After the camera starts to move away from Cassel and pan back toward “Director Charli,” she’s the one who gets to lip-sync her final verse, “I’m always craving an experience that feels dangerous/And maybe this is it, maybe this is what I need/‘Cause it’s the only way to feel like I’m not actually me.” And with that, XCX has hit the nail on the head in terms of the reason why so many people want to be actors, apart from an intense desire to be loved and adored by all. The kind of desire that goes hand in hand with being a Leo, as XCX also happens to be.
To the point of spotlight-seeking, the lyrics, “Your French exit [so, obviously, she needed a French actor to star in her video], chase the stars/Yeah, the ones in your eyes/But let’s be honest, I’m talking about the ones on the pavement” are not only a nod to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but also to, arguably, Adele asking, “Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements?” and possibly even a famed Oscar Wilde aphorism. None other than: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
And some of us will forever try to be a certain kind of star. For Charli, that kind, right now, is a film one. Even though there’s probably never been a worse time to attempt going into “the industry.” Hence, the reason she ought to have slightly amended one of her lyrics to, “Am I bein’ fuckin’ stupid/If I try to be a girl on the screen when the industry is going entirely AI?” And that extends even to the so-called cinephile on her Music, Fashion, Film album cover, Martin Scorsese. But no matter to Charli. She’s created her own niche in the music industry before, so it’s likely the film one will be no different.
Buy The Brat of Pop (Volume 1) here.
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