Evanescence: "The Moment"

Movies and pop music snuggle up once again. First there was Barbie summer, then there was Brat, in which Letterboxd's most illustrious contributor Charli XCX proposed a Muppet Babies variant of the messy-women's lib pop culture pushed into vogue (and, doubtless, Vogue) as this century gathered pace. Now Brat's creative prime mover offers an A24-backed mockumentary, The Moment, composed along postmodern, Kneecap-like lines as simultaneously artistic self-mythologising and an insider's guide to What Charli Did Next. As Aidan Zamiri's film has it, this mostly involves the singer retreating behind Dylanesque dark glasses (don't look back) and reacting with varying levels of Brat (and Grump) to the idea of doing anything - perhaps unsurprisingly, given the options being set before her by a label desperate to capitalise on all things Brat. In order of the priority The Moment affords them, these include an Amazon-sponsored concert film overseen by a "visionary" director (Alexander Skarsgård) who proceeds to make a total nuisance of himself, and copious branding opportunities, most disastrously a Brat credit card targeted at Charli's queer fanbase that serves much the same narrative purpose as Krusty Burger's LGBTQBLT ("How can a ploy this cynical and shameless fail?") did in The Simpsons. Last and least on the list of priorities, to the extent no-one in the movie even thinks to talk about it: new music. (One surprise awaiting fans is how little Charli there is on the soundtrack; perhaps she was clean out of inspiration post-"Wuthering Heights".) If the Charli we see on screen is keen to resist positioning - going so far as to whisk herself away to an Ibizan health spa when it all gets too much - the Charli making the film is doing nothing but. The Moment exists principally to raise the possibility that whatever she does next may be Brat, but may not be anything like as hot, happening or indeed successful. Zamiri's film may have already borne this out by opening at a lowly number nine at the UK box office, albeit in a competitive week for new releases.

For fullest enjoyment, you may need to be more invested in Brat as a concept than this viewer, who still thinks of Roger Kitter whenever he hears that particular B-word, and to find the machinations of the music industry (or of the music industry as presented in The Moment) inherently fascinating. As it is, I spent most of the film's 103 minutes wondering whether Charli might have been better off playing a character with autobiographical traits, as Gaga surely did in A Star is Born, rather than merely playing herself (or "herself"). That might have proved both a riskier and more rewarding strategy; in this version, the singer is all too visibly playing the kind of diva-in-waiting that Madonna - an even savvier performer in matters of public image - was being in 1991's In Bed with Madonna, her pre-rehearsed tantrums carefully controlled, her mid-strop breathwork impeccable. Zamiri's film is above all else a document of a moment where the bulk of our popstars have been stage-schooled. Dotted around Charli, we get celebrity hangers-on (Rachel Sennott, Kylie Jenner, Julia Fox), interspersed with actors who've fared better in mockumentaries with far funnier, more purposeful scripts (Jamie Demetriou, Alex Macqueen). At least Skarsgård, whose moment this may ultimately be, is enjoying himself, albeit in the stock role of the clueless male creative; the one distinction is that you won't have seen that role filled by someone quite this handsome. What's semi-interesting about The Moment is its foundational sourness about the music business: exhausting and malformed when not plain opportunistic, geared predominantly towards snuffing out original or personal expression, this is not an industry anyone would choose to get into or stay within for long. (One way of explaining the film to those over the age of fifty: it's Charli XCX's Slade in Flame. Or even Charli's "Radio Musicola".) The movie business, for once, has stepped up in this respect, enabling this particular performer to do what she wants to do and say what she wants to say. Still, the moment Zamiri chronicles here for Charli has passed; so too, by the time you read this, will The Moment.

The Moment is now playing in cinemas nationwide.