The British artist’s semi-fictionalized, more-real-than-real rumination on the pitfalls of fame — and the “brat summer season” she impressed — has all the trimmings of an experimental style movie in any case.
A famous person musician taking part in themself in their very own film? Test. Themes of creative self-reflection interspersed with trippy dream sequences and stylized, glitchy, slime-green title playing cards? All there. There’s even an prolonged Jesus-esque metaphor of XCX martyrizing herself for the followers.
In some methods, it reads as such esoteric insider baseball, you can hardly anticipate anybody however probably the most diehard XCX followers — determined for any perception into the inside world of their hero — to listing it as something even approaching a favorite.
However how out there may be it, actually? Trying on the plot, we have seen most of this earlier than: Following the unbelievable success of her dance-club themed 2024 album Brat, Charli XCX was each using excessive on — and suffocating beneath the load of — the pop-culture wave she launched.
WATCH | The Second trailer:
In actual life, a presidential hopeful was busy associating herself with the bratty archetype extolled by the 2024 album. Within the film, a financial institution launched a Brat-themed bank card supposed to snag the “younger queer market” (“Do it’s a must to show that you simply’re homosexual?” a uncertain, involved XCX asks within the movie, earlier than reluctantly approving the plan anyway).
And seemingly in each, sycophantic, artistically void studio execs frantically puzzled find out how to maintain this complete Charli and the Cash Manufacturing facility factor going. From the document label’s ivory tower assembly room, the choice on one of the simplest ways to maintain Brat on life help appears to be a live performance movie — that endlessly worthwhile (although creatively vapid) product that already earned Taylor Swift and Beyoncé beaucoup bucks.
The issue? Properly, XCX isn’t any Beyoncé. As we be taught following her across the awkward meet-and-greets, stilted “What’s in my bag” interview rooms and self-conscious rehearsals for her ongoing tour, our star started this complete factor within the type of situation she finds most comfy: no oversight, no expectations and with a give attention to capturing the messy membership esthetic the place she feels most at residence.
Now, a rotating solid of moon-eyed flunkies perpetually badger her for enter — asking if she wants something in a method that at all times appears so as to add extra work for her as an alternative of much less. And all the things is propped up on the expectation that Charli XCX’s irreverent, offhand genius will earn everybody round her their subsequent paycheque; that the easygoing confidence infused within the public’s interpretation of Brat will prolong by means of XCX into an endless collection of worthwhile ventures.
Sadly, the movie star — gifted, although nonetheless on no account trusting of the highlight immediately shone on her — is not truly all that certain she is aware of what she’s doing.
Boiled down, they’re parts discovered within the overwhelming majority of music biopics. From Bohemian Rhapsody to Higher Man to Again to Black, it appears almost each fashionable film a few real-life musician may be distilled as: “Transitioning from obscurity to fame, a tortured artist is misled by exploitative enterprise execs into valuing earnings over the purity of their product.”
And as The Second‘s XCX drifts from honouring the unique intention of her artwork alongside dedicated good friend and stage supervisor Celeste (Hailey Gates), to falling beneath the sway of manipulative live performance movie director Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård), issues do harken to that cliché.
This isn’t necessarily a foul factor. Given the truth that The Second truly cares about crafting an intelligible, practical plot, it’s already head and shoulders above its most blatant comparability: The Weeknd’s interminably obscure Hurry Up Tomorrow, the characteristic movie interpretation of his album of the identical title.
On the similar time, it is all supported by a surprisingly mature and nuanced efficiency by XCX herself — which maybe should not be a shock in any respect, given her apparent cinematic aspirations. The musician already performed herself in final yr’s Overcompensating TV collection and likewise acted within the movies Erupcja and Sacrifice.
This yr, she’s slated to look in Olivia Wilde’s I Need Your Intercourse, The Gallerist from Cathy Yan (who described XCX as “a cinephile by means of and thru”) and the net horror Faces of Loss of life.
In The Second, it manifests in a seemingly trustworthy and susceptible try to reveal her personal failings. Strolling the treacherous tightrope of pity farming, we see XCX betray her rules in probably the most trustworthy method doable — not due to an inflated, out-of-touch ego however as a result of she yearns to be good and profitable as a lot as anybody else would, and is simply as terrified because the suit-wearing PR folks of the bankroll drying up.
All of it places The Second in that extremely uncommon enviornment: one of many few star automobiles to successfully evoke sympathy for hard-done-by, woe-is-me millionaires.
That is earlier than even addressing the genuinely spectacular cameo by Kylie Jenner as herself. In the meantime, Skarsgård is having probably the most enjoyable he is ever had; all that is lacking in his cartoonish villainy is the odd moustache twirl and some damsels tied to coach tracks.
But it surely’s not all sunshine and roses. Regardless of a pessimistically realist ending that turns the biopic components of creative purity on its head, The Second tends to get tripped up in its personal ambitions.
Concurrently attempting to make factors about influencer tradition, creative exploitation, the travails of fame, the inventive course of — and the way onerous it’s to be Jenner’s good friend — The Second‘s narrative focus will get a bit jumbled towards the center.
The often amateurish plotting was seemingly baked in from the start. Primarily based on an thought from XCX, the movie was co-written by first-time screenwriter Bertie Brandes and directed by XCX’s photographer, Aidan Zamiri.
It is not the primary time a star shooter turned their lens to cinema. After all, there was Stanley Kubrick’s flip from journal profiles to 1952’s Concern and Want. And Beatles photographer Robert Freeman made the hallucinogenic movie star satire The Touchables, earlier than maturing with the extra coherent, and far superior, Secret World.
We might be seeing one thing extra just like Freeman right here: Making the soar from trend shoots to characteristic movies, Zamiri shows some spectacular instincts. All that is missing is the restraint, and resultant readability, that comes from expertise.
Which, for a primary outing, realistically means The Second just isn’t the most effective factor you may see all yr. However when it comes to meta-fictional-artist exposés, impressed by and starring a musician taking part in themselves, in a story primarily based on their latest platinum-selling album? Properly, it is not less than high 3.
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