Early into The Moment, a kind of Spice World for recreational cocaine users, the pop star Charli xcx (playing a grouchy and frazzled version of herself) is forced into small talk with the middle-aged man driving her to a rehearsal space in Dagenham. He asks her what she does for a living. “Dance pop,” she tells him, ambivalently. “So like Leona Lewis?” he replies. Told her name, the driver Googles her. “Charli xcx” appears lower in the search results than sensitive pop bro Charlie Puth and the archaic internet meme “Charlie bit my finger”. He vaguely recognises a hit she had a decade ago, the plasticky Fault in Our Stars anthem “Boom Clap”, that she says was written “for a movie about kids with cancer”. She pouts, grumbles, and hides behind her sunglasses.
The Moment, directed by Aidan Zamiri and based on a concept by Charli herself, is an existential horror movie disguised as a mockumentary, about a pop star so used to flopping that she’s found a kind of comfort in it, but who suddenly becomes a very, very big deal. It’s inspired by Charli’s ascent in 2024 from prolonged B-tier pop stardom to cultural hegemony, the key being Brat, her sixth record and an album full of buzzing, clawing, galaxy-brained earworms about swagger and self-doubt.
