by Nataliia Serebriakova
Worth: $16.40
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Charli XCX, Rachel Sennott, Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette
Intro:
… funny, fast-paced, and highly watchable …
In the film The Moment, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, the well-known pop singer Charli XCX (playing herself) receives an offer from Amazon to make a film about her show. The project is to be directed by Johannes, an ambitious European filmmaker played by Alexander Skarsgård, who has his own vision and wants to turn it into a television product for a mass audience. Charli’s managers are not entirely on board. Torn between these opposing perspectives, Charli escapes to a retreat, where she is confronted with a new personal challenge.
A Gen Z icon, Charli XCX is best known for introducing the word “brat” into cultural slang in 2024 after the release of her album of the same name. In its contemporary meaning, brat no longer refers to a spoiled child, but to a deliberately provocative, self-confident, and unruly persona: someone who refuses to be polished, “well-behaved,” or emotionally manageable, embracing chaos, desire, and imperfection without apology.
Judging by the film, its events seem to take place after the success of the album, as the scenography of the future show is saturated with the Brat logo. The same logo appears on a green bank card from which young people in clubs snort cocaine. The singer’s defiant image — a woman who insists on being herself and does not hide acne on her skin — is, on the one hand, partly performative. Rumour has it that Charli does not actually live a clubbing lifestyle and does not use cocaine. On the other hand, this carefully circulated image has become a mass phenomenon that helped make her famous. She may not be “that girl,” but her millions of young fans around the world very much are.
Charli co-wrote this hybrid mockumentary together with the film’s director Aidan Zamiri — known for his music videos for Charli as well as a 2 minute film about Timothée Chalamet — and screenwriter Bertie Brandes. Last year, fans were surprised to spot Charli attending regular public screenings at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals, sitting in ordinary theaters among audiences. At the time, she announced that her work had entered a “cinema era.”
Ahead of the film’s release, an ironic viral video appeared online in which Charli claims that she has watched every film in the history of cinema and is now ready to make one herself.
Undoubtedly, The Moment is an auteur-driven project. The film is funny, fast-paced, and highly watchable, largely thanks to Charli herself and Alexander Skarsgård, who delivers a brilliant performance as an arrogant opportunist eager to exploit the cult of the erratic pop star for his own ratings. At one point, he even uses the word “bitch” as part of the stage design. Many of the film’s funniest moments revolve around Skarsgård’s character, including a line in which he asks, “Does Charli really sing about cocaine in her songs? Or is it metaphorical cocaine?” — desperately trying to reframe the content to attract children as a target audience.
The film’s cinematographer is Sean Price Williams, who frequently relies on close-ups and is also known for his acclaimed directorial debut The Sweet East. It is worth noting that Charli presents herself as an intellectual and a cinephile in a scene where she visits a cosmetologist, clearly referencing Maps to the Stars by her favourite director, David Cronenberg — a film that appears in her top four on Letterboxd.
At the same time, Charli’s own musical legacy seems to trouble even her. In the film’s final moment, the soundtrack features ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by The Verve. Perhaps Charli XCX still does not have a song of her own that can surpass this iconic pop hit.
