The Moment follows the pop star on the rise, battling “the complexities of fame and industry pressure” while barrelling towards her arena tour debut. Charli darts between rehearsals, interviews, and sterile dressing rooms in a hyper-edited haze. One of the trailer’s sharpest beats shows Charli screaming at “Tim” (Jamie Demetriou) in frustration as she inhales a cigarette; elsewhere, there are stage and mannequin malfunctions, leaving Charli’s character watching in fear. Is it a bad omen, or just another day in the music industry?
The film is also stacked with an eclectic cast that not only reflects the glamour of the Essex girl’s inner circle, but also how everyone wants a piece of her moment: Kylie Jenner, Hailey Gates, and Rachel Sennott also feature.
The film’s title is already a triple entendre: The Moment almost parodies itself. The idea of “being the moment” is irresistible for any musician with designs on stardom, but also faintly absurd—the idea that there is a single peak you can reach without, say, burning out, or tumbling into a depression when it inevitably ends.
Charli, of course, is aware of all this. “I not only know that this won’t last forever, I’m also really interested in the fact that it doesn’t,” she recently told Vanity Fair. It’s all pretty meta: a pop star riding the wave of creating a cultural phenomenon while also confronting the fact it has a shelf life…
Of course, The Moment is far from Charli’s only new chapter. In the last 18 months, she has crafted the soundtrack for the hotly anticipated Wuthering Heights adaptation, started a Substack, and gotten married.
If our first glimpses at The Moment are any indication, the film isn’t going to be a straightforward commentary on fame. It seems more interested in the strange in-between spaces: the blurry hours backstage, the uncomfortable silences while in glam, having a paid team around you instead of real friends… Call it Brat winter, call it Charli’s auteur era, call it whatever you like, but The Moment is nigh.