The Moment review Charli xcx struggles through defanged Brat summer satire

"It's really hard to let go of Brat and let go of this thing that is so inherently me and become my entire life, you know? she said, seemingly naked in bed. I started thinking about culture, and the ebbs and flows and lifespan of things She acknowledged that over-saturation is perilous, and that maybe she should stop, but I'm also interested in the tension of staying too long. I find that quite fascinating."

"The frank, informal admission fit with Brat, a pop culture-shifting album that channeled, with stunning immediacy, the imperious ego and bristling insecurity of an artist keenly aware of her own precarious level of fame. Her ambivalence was understandable Brat rapidly turned Charli, who spent over a decade as a fixture of pop's so-called middle class, into a main pop girl, an artist played at midwest sorority weddings and used by a US presidential campaign."

"But her interest in the tension of staying too long also felt a little trite, the type of smart-sounding musing that dead-ends in self-awareness. Brat summer was heady, hedonistic, fun a meme, an aesthetic, a vibe, a moment. That said moment passes? Well yeah. I felt a similar vacantness while watching The Moment, the visually hypnotic yet curiously shallow meta-mockumentary of the Brat era, which spends 113 hyper-stylish minutes circling her ambivalence over winning the zeitgeist without moving beyond that initial assessment."

Charli XCX reflected on nearly a year of Brat, admitting difficulty letting go and pondering culture’s ebbs, flows, and lifespan. She acknowledged over-saturation as perilous while expressing fascination with staying too long. Brat transformed Charli from a pop middle-class fixture into a mainstream pop figure embraced by Midwest sorority playlists and even a US presidential campaign. The Moment, conceived by Charli and written by Aidan Zamiri and Bertie Brandes, premiered at Sundance and delivers 113 hyper-stylish minutes of meta-mockumentary. The film is visually hypnotic, ties itself to Brat’s social-media timeline with fluency, and assumes high fan literacy, leaving non-fans with little reward.

Read at www.theguardian.com