It may be Charli xcx’s first Sundance Film Festival, but she is starting with a bang, debuting three films at the fest’s final installment in Park City.
On Friday night at the Eccles, it was a Charli double feature with the premiere of Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex, where she shares a screen with Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman, and The Moment, her A24 mockumentary about her Brat album and world tour.
“Right now, I am like the me in the film where I am wanting Brat to stop and pivot. That is not because I don’t love it, it’s just because for all of us as artists, you want to challenge yourself and totally switch the creative soup that you are in and go and live in a different bowl for a while,” said Charli in the post-screening Q&A for The Moment. “That is how I feel about the projects that I am in. I just really want to work with these incredible directors like Aidan [Zamiri], Gregg Araki, [and] Cathy Yan, who I can live completely different lives with.”
The Moment follows a fictionalized Charli as she contends with her newfound worldwide fame thanks to her dance pop Brat album and decides whether to let that moment pass or, at the behest of her label and pretty much everyone, continue to capitalize on the popularity with increasingly zany schemes to cling to the zeitgeist, from branded credit cards to riding in on a giant cigarette in her arena tour. After the screening, Zamiri noted the film’s debt to other music mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, saying, “This film wouldn’t exist without people like Rob Reiner.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s review of the film, by critic Richard Lawson, calls Charli a “natural, engaging actor.”
“I would like to think I am not as much of a nightmare as the Charli in the film, but my real managers are in the audience and they probably know the true answer to that,” the popstar laughed in her after premiere remarks. “As an artist, I am quite a volatile person. I am nice, though! I am quite nice, too. Right?” Charli asked, turning towards her director. Zamiri agreed, after which Charli flips her hair, saying, “Too fucking right.” The back-and-forth got a massive laugh from the audience.
In addition to I Want Your Sex and The Moment, Charli will also be seen in Yan’s The Gallerist, which stars Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega. The triple feature in Park City comes after roles in projects like 100 Nights a Hero and romance dramedy Erupcja, as well as an appearance playing herself in Amazon comedy Overcompensating. Upcoming features include the horror Faces of Death and the Dakota Johnson-directed drama A Tree Is Blue.
All of this new onscreen work is on top of producing original music for David Lowery’s latest A24 drama Mother Mary and the highly anticipated Wuthering Heights adaptation from Emerald Fennell.
Taking one audience question, a moviegoer asked Charli how she has the time for all of her creative endeavors. She answered with lyrics from her Brat hit “365”, saying, “Don’t sleep, don’t eat, just do it on repeat — to quote me.”
