February Movies Part 2: The Moment & Wuthering Heights

It's a Charli XCX special today. We have one mockumentary about her going on tour to promote her Brat album, and then we have Emerald Fennell's highly divisive adaptation of a beloved piece of gothic literature that features an appropriately chaotic soundtrack by Charli XCX. Let's dive right in for some glorious insanity.

The Moment: Directed by Aidan Zamiri, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Bertie Brandes, this is a hilarious and incisive mockumentary about the current life of a pop star. Charli XCX stars as herself (well, a ridiculous version of herself), at the height of her stardom in 2024 after Brat Summer. Her record label is desperate to keep the momentum going through various marketing promotions and constant hype, leaving Charli exhausted and more than a little vulnerable. They also want to film her concert tour for Amazon, which means hiring a super weird director, Johannes (played by Alexander Skarsgard, the king of being a comically sleazy Scandinavian), who clashes with Charli's friend and trusted creative director, Celeste (Hailey Benton Gates). Meanwhile, her hapless manager, Tim (played by Jamie Demetriou, the patron saint of hapless characters), tries to juggle all her commitments and money-making ventures, with varying levels of success.

Everything is chaotic, messy, and set to Charli's rave music, which is eminently danceable, but in this film is used more to induce a sense of a heart attack. Do not watch this film if you're prone to photoepileptic seizures, that's for sure. There are so many jokes to keep the momentum going: I especially enjoyed a marketing ploy to promote limited edition Brat credit cards to young, queer people, where Charli appears to be the only sensible person who questions, "how does the bank know they're queer?" I had a great time giggling throughout this film, and even if you aren't a fan of Charli's music, this is a very funny and painfully accurate summary of influencer culture, social media, and the toll that fame takes on young artists these days. If you get tired of Charli's music, there's also a particularly delicious needle drop at the end of this movie that heralds this as a quintessentially British production. I loved it so.

Wuthering Heights: This movie has been extremely polarizing so let's get this out of the way - I loved it. As far as I'm concerned, Emerald Fennell is one of my favorite directors, and I will watch anything she does with a big ol' smile on my face. It perhaps helps that I hate Emily Bronte's 1847 novel and never regarded it as a swoony romance. I always saw Heathcliff and the other characters as odious people, and thankfully, my girl Fennell agrees. So what follows is a glorious adaptation that is scrumptious to behold, but makes no bones about the ugliness of its protagonists.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star as Cathy and Heathcliff, the doomed lovers at the center of our tale. We first follow them as children: Cathy is the only daughter of the impoverished and abusive Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes, having a jolly time hamming it up as an alcoholic degenerate gambler), and she has a paid companion, Nelly (the bastard daughter of a nobleman), who strives to be the voice of reason when Cathy is prone to her more dramatic fits. One day, Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff, a boy who was being beaten by his father on the road. He declares that Heathcliff can be Cathy's "pet," but obviously, he's nothing more than a servant boy, who is also subject to Mr. Earnshaw's abuses and tyrannies. Cathy and Heathcliff quickly become fast friends, however, and as they grow up, it becomes clear that maybe their friendship is becoming a little bit more...lusty.

The imagery in this movie is hilarious, with Fennell managing to make egg yolks and slugs seem so sexy that I will never look at them in the same way again. The costume design by Jacqueline Durran is absolutely unparalleled, and the cinematography by Linus Sandgren makes every frame of this film look like it should be in a museum. I could simply stare at this movie all day, while the weird and eerie Charli XCX soundtrack thumped around me. Everything about the film is a little anachronistic - the fabrics of some of the dresses seem like they would be more appropriate at a rave than on the misty Yorkshire moors, the music is very techno, and there's a wild amount of sex and kink, considering none of that ever happens in the novel. I would like to believe that if Emily Bronte watched this adaptation, she would publicly condemn it but secretly declare this is exactly what she would have written if she had not been constrained by her era. It is way too sexy and over-the-top, but it's a batshit crazy cinematic spectacle that I fell in love with again and again.