The Moment Charli XCX

In the still short amount of time (though not to no-attention-span Gen Z) since Brat was released on June 7, 2024, Charli XCX has systematically set about, if not “rebranding,” then at least pivoting away from it. Well, not even just Brat, but music entirely. As she’s been mentioning a lot lately, film is the medium that’s been calling to and inspiring her the most this past year. Even if that means funneling her music into film, as she’s done with the Wuthering Heights Soundtrack. In fact, taking into account that Charli began to work on that record while on tour with Brat, it makes sense that some of the darkness and toxicity of the famed Emily Brontë tale might also bleed into the tone of The Moment, yet another project of hers that combines music and film—and oh so deftly.

But then what else could one expect in this matter (i.e., creating an ingenious mockumentary) from the person who put Josie and the Pussycats on the film programming at Alamo Drafthouse? And while, yes, another more obvious movie choice she XCX threw in for the “Guest Selects” series was Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (often cited as the first true, “right proper” mockumentary), the more “accurate” (a.k.a. closely-aligned-with) movie—which isn’t a mockumentary (not technically, anyway)—is Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan’s still too underrated 2001 satire. And, needless to say, The Moment offers plenty of satire about the music industry as well, with few pop stars currently in “the business” as well-suited to commenting on it as XCX (because, clearly, Taylor Swift isn’t cut out for giving this kind of hard-hitting commentary, as comfortable as she is in “the system” and all…which is something that The End of an Era made even more apparent). Indeed, something she told Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes on SmartLess (apart from the fact that she doesn’t “actually really wanna have kids”) is that one of the things that surprised her the most about the music industry once she was on the inside of it is that “no one really knows what they’re doing.”

That sentiment is conveyed throughout The Moment, particularly through record executive Tammy Pitman (Rosanna Arquette) and label stooge Johannes Godwin (Alexander Skarsgård), who “specializes” in directing concert tours (but is described by IRL Charli as “just a guy who thinks he gets it, but he doesn’t get it”). And it’s this “specialty” that lands him the gig of directing XCX’s first arena tour, which will be filmed for Amazon Music. Just one of many indicators that Charli has “sold out” (a point that will be further driven home by the antithetical tagline for the concert that encourages less die-hard Brat enthusiasts to “be a 365 party girl from the comfort of your own home”). And though she was reluctant to compromise her artistic integrity at first, the pressure she feels to “keep this Brat thing going” (as Tammy says with a straight face at a label meeting) is too great not to cave to the temptations of taking it full-tilt commercial.

This being something that, of all people, Kylie Jenner encourages her to do after the pair runs into one another at a luxury hotel in Ibiza. And the reason it’s been said that Jenner’s role is so integral to the film (despite her brief appearance in it) is because she’s the devil on Charli’s shoulder telling her to “go even harder,” especially if/when she feels like the public is “getting sick of” her. Charli becomes unusually susceptible to this “solid advice” because Jenner doles it out after 1) Charli is feeling particularly vulnerable thanks to just being rejected by Maria (Arielle Dombasle, this casting choice being another “cinephile flex” on Charli’s part), the holistic facialist who “can’t deal with” XCX’s energy and 2) Jenner telling her that Johannes was who she and her sisters were hoping to get to film something for them, only to find out that he was already booked with her.

Realizing that Johannes is good enough for the Kardashian-Jenners, XCX starts to question her erstwhile commitment to the “art” itself, even though she assured her creative director for the tour, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates), that she wanted to preserve the true, unvarnished identity of Brat. This done primarily through the almost “painful” strobe lights they’ve curated to make each tour venue feel like a club. However, when Johannes gets a look at what they’ve cooked up, he immediately starts to undermine the aesthetic of the tour, reminding Celeste that a club setting alone doesn’t “tell a story,” therefore won’t film well.

Celeste, in turn, reminds Johannes that most of the people attending the show aren’t looking for “a story,” nor do they give a fuck about “family-friendliness” considering that many of them don’t want children (a seemingly foreshadowing line to what went down with Charli on the SmartLess podcast) and that most of them have been shunned by their families (though “fathers” is the specific callout) for their “lifestyle.” That means: being gay and/or some other letter in LGBTQIA+. And, talking of queerness, Charli is informed by her assistant, Tim Potts (Jamie Demetriou, the Alan Cumming [who appears in both Spice World and Josie and the Pussycats], as it were, of this operation), that her whole “Brat thing” is now attached to a credit card aimed at “young/queer” people. When Charli asks how they’re supposed to actually know if the people applying for the card are gay, someone else chimes in that it’s more about appealing to a certain “demographic.” Not seeming to understand that Charli’s true demographic, gay or otherwise, has lauded her for her “authenticity” all these years as opposed to her brand partnerships. In this instance, the fictional Howard Stirling bank, which will eventually play a major role in Charli’s inevitable downward spiral.

And, speaking of brands, there are many subliminally thrown in by way of the trippy, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cuts and titles of The Moment. Such “subliminalness” also tying back in with Josie and the Pussycats, which frames the music industry—via “MegaRecords”—as one giant subliminal advertisement, with the indoctrination not only sanctioned by MegaRecords’ label head Fiona (Parker Posey)—no last name needed—but various high-ranking government officials as well, who benefit from the economic boost of teenagers using their disposable income to buy a bunch of shit that they’re told to.

Though Charli needed no such encouragement during the era of her life when she was worshipping the Spice Girls. Which brings one to the glaring connection between Spice World and The Moment. A link that is automatically paid homage to based not only on Charli’s repeated admission to being obsessed with the group as a 90s youth, but also a certain title that pops up during the intro titles of Spice World: “Based on an Idea by the Spice Girls & Kim Fuller.” To be sure, it’s a phrase that smacks of: “Based on an Original Idea by Charli XCX.” Of course, there’s no denying that Aidan Zamiri, the director and co-writer of The Moment (as well as one of Charli’s besties), didn’t need any guidance on using that 1997 masterpiece of satire (though it isn’t agreed upon by all as being a full-tilt “mockumentary”) for shaping The Moment. Besides that, one of Zamiri’s earliest gigs involved following real-life Spice Girl Victoria Beckham around and filming her. Thus, in March of 2019, Zamiri made his work documenting Beckham known with a clip of some of his footage and the caption, “For the past couple months I’ve had the v surreal pleasure of following @victoriabeckham around with a camera and documenting some of her extremely busy life.” Zamiri can now say the same of Charli for The Moment, which also can’t help but radiate the aura of another OG rockumentary (that, often times, can feel like a mockumentary): Truth or Dare.

In 1990, this Alek Keshishian-directed doc followed Madonna and her troupe of gay-as-a-maypole dancers as they embarked on the Blond Ambition Tour. And while Madonna might be perceived, by many, as taking herself too seriously, her campy “performance” of bitchery and annoyance throughout this documentary appears to be something that Charli studied under for guidance and inspiration (or maybe it’s just part and parcel of being a fellow Leo). What’s more, Madonna took the same kind of shine to then ingenue filmmaker Alek Keshishian (who, offering another somewhat uncanny thread between Madonna and Charli XCX, was first noticed by Madonna because of a pop-opera version of Wuthering Heights he directed for his senior thesis featuring the music of Kate Bush and, who else, Madonna) as Charli did to Zamiri. In fact, without her faith in his abilities, it likely would have taken Zamiri several more years to arrive at directing a feature-length film.

But XCX stated that she recognized that Zamiri “had a movie in him” after he wrote a two-page script for the “360” video. A “narrative,” one could argue, that also served as a jumping-off point for The Moment. Including the fact that Rachel Sennott and Julia Fox appear in it, as they also do in The Moment (though the former to a much more noticeable degree). As for Zamiri’s writing process this time around, it took the help of co-writer Bertie Brandes to bring out the best in him. Their collaboration prompting him to remark, “We really enjoyed writing these scenes a lot because it sort of felt cathartic in a lot of ways. We were able to, like, put down on paper all the kind of painful conversations you have a lot of time doing, you know, creative work in a commercial context.” Something that XCX has become increasingly familiar with ever since the Crash days. While on the subject of that album, Charli even seems keen to emphasize the line, “I’m your favorite reference baby” with a scene of herself in her hotel bathroom wiping blood away from her skin (Crash enthusiasts need no explanation as to how that can be construed as a Crash allusion).

This being just one of many scenes that pulse with tension and anxiety—a decided hallmark of the movies directed by the Safdie brothers (a.k.a. one of several “A24 darlings,” along with Ari Aster). Unsurprisingly, there are a few connections to said filmmakers in The Moment, with another one of Zamiri’s frequent “collaborators,” Timothée Chalamet a.k.a. Marty Supreme, being thanked in the credits (how else do you think Jenner got the gig?) and Hailey Benton Gates also having roles in Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme (not to mention being in a few episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return—because, yes, The Moment has its Lynchian parallels, too [not least of which is the video for “Residue”]).

A key part of sustaining this level of tension stems from how, like Spice World and Josie and the Pussycats, The Moment is also centered on the big lead-up to a major concert that Charli must perform in, no matter how reluctant or outright unwilling she is to do so (because, even in the satirical version of the music business, the show must always go on). Especially now that it’s been so blatantly tainted by Johannes’ commercial influence. One that he also tries to foist on Celeste by explaining to her during one of their head-butting scenes together, “At some point, the night has to end and they turn on the lights and you, like [makes a static-y sound]. And then the next morning you wake up and it’s like, ‘Ow my head is pounding, what’s happen—whoa!’” It’s a description that sounds as much like subtext for what’s happening to Charli with the success of Brat as it does a description of why Johannes can’t have strobe lights in the show.

By the time Charli has hit rock bottom because of her Howard Stirling faux pas (having “unwittingly” caused the institution to go bankrupt with a careless and frantic late-night post in Ibiza), she ends up coming to a certain realization about why she’s having such a hard time letting go of Brat. To use a party metaphor (for one would expect nothing less), Charli leaves a voice note for Celeste telling her, “I know it’s not chic to be the last person at the party, but I hate going home.” However, with The Moment, Charli has come home, utterly in her element within this “niche” genre of film (because of course it has to be niche if Charli is involved). And, in making the mockumentary her bitch, XCX also eviscerates the music industry with the same campy, wry slant as Spice World and Josie and the Pussycats. And the same captivating “fly-on-the-wall” perspective/serving cunt energy as Truth or Dare.