
The Moment is directed by Aidan Zamiri which is his directorial debut.
The Moment is Charli xcx’s first leading role (when you look release wise Erupcja came out in April) and while I do love her performance in Erupcja a lot more. She still does a fantastic job here, the film itself is also quite great as well. It’s a mockumentary that takes full advantage of its ideas and expands upon them quite well.
The cast is all around quite strong, whether it’s cameos or the main characters the film’s world feels very complete with the performances. Rachel Sennott gets a great scene, Kylie Jenner surprisingly gives a decent performance (she plays a fictionalized version of herself so I do think it works here.) Rosanna Arquette gives an amusingly aggressive portrayal of industry pressure. Alexander Skarsgård is a cartoon character come to life and the film’s atmosphere compliments that incredibly well. Skarsgård plays Johannes Godwin a pretentious music video director who is very unhinged and does a fantastic job of epitomizing corporate groupthink and the more absurd, toxic traits of the music industry.
Finally there is Charli xcx in this film she plays a fictionalized version of herself. Not only does this work with the film’s comedic moments but it does make the more dramatic ones as well as the character moments that much more effective. Charli xcx gives a vulnerable performance that really opens herself up as a person, when the film focuses on these moments it’s at its best. Her conversations with the rest of the characters perfectly match the atmosphere the film is going for, there’s this line of being grounded and over exaggerated that this film sits comfortably on. Usually this would be an issue, but I do think that Charli xcx’s performance combined with the script are able to keep it going at this steady pace.
The writing is quite great here, the main exploration here is the music industry and how greedy it can really be. The film also tackles the completely messy nature of how art is sold which can hurt artists who are passionate. While these topics are certainly not new, the way the film goes about exploring them in this mockumentary style works incredibly well. We get to see it starting to affect Charli xcx throughout the film which leads to some particular great moments, there are a lot of ups and downs in the film which really do capture of how the music industry really behaves. One moment the higher ups are panicking because something fails and then the next they are happy as a clam because something did incredibly well.
Overall The Moment is quite fantastic, it’s definitely not going to be for everyone (especially if you aren’t a fan of Charli xcx.) However I still do think it’s worth a look, there’s some really strong acting as well as very well put together film here.
The Moment is available on all VOD platforms.
9/10 A








