REEL | 'Brat' Summer Forever – Charli XCX Captures 'The Moment'

"It's all cringe."

A24 / VVS Films

Provocative British pop superstar Charli XCX (aka Charlotte Emma Aitchison) plays a fictionalized version of herself in Scottish music video director and celebrity photographer Aidan Zamiri's amusingly frank mockumentary about the music industry's stark vanity. Filmed during the height the Brat 2024 Arena Tour, The Moment takes the Brat Summer phenomenon that captured the popular culture zeitgeist to extreme lengths after her sixth studio album release.

Filmed like a faux all-access, backstage concert tour documentary, Charli's sophisticated taste shines through as she and Zamiri both recreate and satirize the realities of maintaining a pop star persona. Some truly memorable supporting roles from Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Rosanna Arquette, and Alexander Skarsgård further add to the hollowness of show business as her entourage.

Charlie's fairly "real," raw performance as a true artist at the peak of her fame and power slowly spiralling out of control due to the demands of others, commerce, and feeding the machine. Its high-contrast, tight focus makes the inward claustrophobia of concert rehearsal feel all the more vivid in its satirical portrayal of being a contemporary pop star.

The Moment is another wryly aware, hilarious vanity project (complimentary) that takes risks to self-mock its own celebrity status that sticks squarely to its vicious satire. Do not mistake the shallowness of its characters, situations, and their vanity for the real deal, as the very dry, but always sharp satire looks to skewer both those who consume from the constant machine of fame as well as those behind it.


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