"Today it's just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair. This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film's star and executive producer proceeds to guide us with agonising glacial slowness through the preparations for her husband's second presidential inauguration."
"She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the candlelit dinner to the starlight ball, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision, she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. As first lady, children will always remain my priority, she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house."
"No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn't it. It's one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn't have a single redeeming quality. I'm not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly,"
A lone viewer attends a private, emptied-cinema screening of a Melania-focused documentary, creating an intimate but eerie atmosphere. The film follows Melania through fashion fittings, table settings, candlelit dinners and inaugural preparations with a slow, glacial narration and emotionless presence. Melania appears as a listless automaton, speaking in hollow platitudes about children and creative vision. The documentary fails to reveal depth or insight, feeling staged, overpriced and artfully preserved like 'designer taxidermy.' Critics compare the portrayal to a latter-day Eva Braun and find the film devoid of redeeming qualities or documentary rigor.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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