brat summer movies
and it's the same but it's cinema so it's not
“If you were to tell me that Charli XCX would have this much cultural impact 6 months ago,” one longtime friend and Marshall and the Movies reader texted me recently, “I would have LAUGHED in your face.” But yet here we are in August 2024 with a presidential campaign embracing the vomit-green aesthetic of Charli XCX’s brat and an omnipresent cultural drumbeat resembling a prolonged Barbenheimer.
Why can’t movies play along?
For those uninitiated to the album of the summer, Charli explained, “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
How does that translate to cinema? Here’s a track-by-track list of corresponding movie recommendations for brat, inspired by a literary-minded post at Vulture last month.
360
“Internationally recognized / I set the tone, it's my design”
I struggled to limit this list to just a single Sofia Coppola film given the director’s talent at capturing the inner lives of outward-facing women and girls, especially ones whom society tends to write off as frivolous. “360,” Charli’s tribute to party girls who aren’t afraid to toot their own horn because they’ve earned their status, can’t help but remind me of Marie Antoinette. Coppola’s anti-historical drama seeks to reclaim the reviled French figure of excess and understand the beheaded queen on her own terms: a survivor who turned herself and her circumstances into an undeniable force.
Marie Antoinette is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Club classics
“Put your hands up and dance / Yeah, I'm gonna dance all night, that's right”
There’s a streak of defiance to “Club classics,” a dance-floor anthem about wanting to hear nothing but the hits until the lights come on. Who better to epitomize that spirit than Sally Bowles of Cabaret, the Weimar Republic music-hall performer who insists that keeping the party going until death is more optimal than living to face down the encroachment of fascism into her country? “Life is a cabaret,” her oft-repeated maxim, serves as much as an invitation as it does a warning.
Cabaret is available on Tubi.
Sympathy is a knife
“This one girl taps my insecurities / Don't know if it's real or if I'm spiraling”
Some have speculated that Charli’s paranoid, tense track “Sympathy is a knife” references the complicated morass of feelings she becomes enmeshed in around Taylor Swift's presence. I’ll leave the Swifties to dissect the Easter eggs, but the song has a percussive and dangerous edge befitting its title that resonates with anyone who’s felt threatened by a more accomplished peer. Such feelings of jealousy and insecurity pierce David Lynch’s surrealistic fever dream Mulholland Dr. This is a film that many have put on a pedestal as being impenetrable for the average moviegoer, yet I’ve found it becomes entirely intelligible when you interpret it through the twisted dream logic of one aspiring actress driven mad by her jealousy over another’s success.
Mullholand Dr. is available on the Criterion Channel.
I might say something stupid
“Door is open, let in but still outside / I look perfect for the background”
There may or may not have been a recent moment where I excused myself from a system overload of extroversion to listen to “I might say something stupid” in a room by myself. The track, in which Charli further plunges into self-doubt, makes for a fascinating downbeat to follow “Sympathy is a knife.” Even a 360 party girl can face a nagging feeling that she doesn’t belong in a social situation, and the song expresses that sensation in a melancholic way that recalls Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto. I once sang the praises of this film in a round-up of my favorite downbeat teen movies, and allow me to reiterate that adolescent introversion has rarely seen such vivid expression. Cinematographer Autumn Durald frequently employs soft-focus portraits of her subjects in suspended slow motion that poetically capture feeling disconnected from your environment.
Palo Alto is available on Peacock and for free with ads on Freevee through Amazon Prime Video.
Talk talk
“Tell me your secrets and fears / Once you talk to me, I'll talk to you”
brat picks up the pace with “Talk talk,” Charli’s vulnerable but slightly more upbeat emotional plea for communication. By its close, the song begins to feel one-sided by the repetition of her desired outcome. Such an expression of an unrequited wish for connection brought to mind Ingmar Bergman’s enigmatic melodrama Persona. This psychologically fraught two-hander between a nurse and her patient, an actress who has mysteriously stopped speaking, captures a similar yearning from dialogue that’s instead expressed as a monologue. Like Charli listing off languages in which she’s willing to talk, the film ends with the collapse of language entirely as the attempt to understand the other results in becoming them altogether.
Persona is available on Max and the Criterion Channel.
Von Dutch
“It's alright to just admit that I'm the fantasy / You're obsessing, just confess it 'cause it's obvious”
I’ll outsource this recommendation to Charli herself.
“Von Dutch,” with its propulsive and throbbing expression of a need for recognition, strikes me as the track that most resembles Ti West’s Pearl. This origin story of a future serial killer captures the moment of her descent into madness, tracking her trauma back to the world not accepting her internal insistence that she is a star. (Or Emma Stone if you’re an Aussie.) These slowly encroaching slasher vibes complement Charli’s unapologetic persona.
Pearl is available on Amazon Prime Video until 8/16.
Everything is romantic
“In a place that can make you change / Fall in love again and again”
It’s probably easiest to understand “Everything is romantic” as “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music for people who do club drugs. This swooning track offers a laundry list of items and sensations that invoke feelings of infatuation. That overwhelming sense of possibility and potential in the mundane brings to mind the experience of Poor Things’ Bella Baxter, who takes in the world from an adult body while possessing a baby’s brain. But don’t take the comparison entirely from me. Listen to Emma Stone herself, who raised some eyebrows when accepting the Golden Globe for the role by referring to it as a rom-com: “I see this as a rom-com, in the sense that Bella falls in life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure — all of it is important.”
Poor Things is available on Hulu.
Rewind
“I hate these doubts that keep running through my mind / Sometimes I really think it would be cool to rewind”
I’m outsourcing another pick here to Charli, who programmed an entire series of movies related to brat at New York’s Roxy Cinema. (Fun fact: it was literally the result of a chance encounter between their projectionist and Charli at a party.) I see the most “Rewind” in Velvet Goldmine, a film whose backward-looking structure most resembles the retrospective gaze of Charli’s lament for not living her teen years with the confidence she now enjoys. There’s that same feeling of wish-fulfillment coursing through the veins of Todd Haynes’ quasi-Bowie biopic as seen through the lens of journalist Arthur Stuart, a man trying to sort through the complicated relationship with his sexuality by solving the mystery of a disappeared glam rocker. Both works share an awareness of the tragedy of seeing the people we could be if we lived our younger years without an internalized sense of shame — and a glorious liberation when inhabiting that best self in the present.
Velvet Goldmine is available to rent from various digital platforms.
So I
“When I'm on stage, sometimes I lie / Say that I like singing these songs you left behind”
If you think Anne Hathaway could never have a brat summer, you’re exactly the person who needs to watch Rachel Getting Married. As Kym, she’s confronting a lot of the same demons as Charli airs out on “So I,” an expression of grief for her lost mentor. The difference here is that the character is directly implicated in the loss that tears her family apart, resulting in nonstop discomfort when she shows up for her sister Rachel’s wedding and continues to act like a tornado of tumultuousness. Jonathan Demme’s final masterpiece is a poignant tribute to airing out feelings of helplessness in the face of despair as a necessary first step to healing.
Rachel Getting Married is available on Hulu.
Girl, so confusing
“Sometimes I think I might hate you / Maybe you just wanna be me”
The remix with Charli’s frenemy Lorde helped “Girl, so confusing” reach its final form as a plea for reconciliation between two female pop stars who an industry insists on pitting against each other. You can get that same sensation within Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell, a Shakespearean-inflected chronicle of Elizabeth Moss’ pugnacious punk rocker Becky Something complete with a five-act structure. The narcissistic frontwoman for Something She antagonizes both the members of her own band as well as the younger Akergirls who look up to her. After Becky’s self-destructive behavior pushes them all to a breaking point, the film provides an unexpectedly moving tribute to the power of picking up the pieces and creating brilliant art through accountability.
Her Smell is available on Tubi.
Apple
“I split the apple down symmetrical lines / And what I find is kinda scary”
Cinema is not short on mother/daughter stories that go hand-in-hand with “Apple,” Charli’s rumination on the reluctant — and perhaps inevitable — resemblances she bears to the woman who brought her into the world. I’ll spotlight Amalia Ulman’s electric debut El Planeta, a rare film that positions two generations of women on a level playing field rather than in a hierarchical relationship. This brassy black comedy commits to chronicling the offbeat exploits of their entropy in a portion of Spain still feeling the effects of the recession. These two codependent women’s problem isn’t finding areas where they relate — it’s identifying places where they aren’t just the same person.
El Planeta is available on Max.
B2b
“I don't wanna fall right back to us / Maybe you should run right back to her”
My effort to push the Mia Hansen-Løve agenda continues by once again encouraging you to watch Goodbye First Love, the French director’s breakout film that captures the residue of passionate young romance.
She captures with images and performances what Charli conjures up with lyrics and melodies on “B2b,” a dizzying loop about trying to avoid falling into rhythms of an on-again, off-again relationship. Both works understand that there’s something that defies logic when trying to move beyond the thralls of someone you can’t quit. It’s part muscle response, part spiritual calling.
Goodbye First Love is available on MUBI.
Mean girls
“Yeah, she's in her mid-twenties, real intelligent / And you hate the fact she's New York City's darling”
I hadn’t seen Party Monster until Charli programmed in The Brat Collection, and I’m glad to now catch up with this formerly maligned and misunderstood marvel of low-budget filmmaking. It’s high camp and affectation from stars Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin as a mentor-mentee pair turned menaces in New York’s wild club scene of the late ‘80s. The resentment that builds from the established luminary having to cede the spotlight to the vanguard of a younger generation reflects Charli’s millennial angst on “Mean Girls,” a track of begrudging respect for the emerging cohort coming to dominate the social scene. It’s a song at its most powerful through its realization that stealing status is the injury, but stealing youth is the insult — and this process of replacement has and will continue eternally.
Party Monster is available on Amazon Prime Video.
I think about it all the time
“And they're exactly the same, but they're different now / And I'm so scared I'm missin' out on something”
At one point in making this list, I had up to three titles with some tie to Greta Gerwig as actress or director — though she’s as classy as they come in the media, her work circles more brat themes than meet the eye. The film I couldn’t budge from was her take on Little Women, which echoes Charli’s confessional track “I think about it all the time.” As the pop star weighs the choices she’s made to prioritize life in the fast lane with music rather than settle down to start a family, the only thing I could think about was how Gerwig centers and elevates this tension within Saoirse Ronan’s take on Jo March. This version of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved literary classic reads between the lines, seeing her as consistent rather than just married off. The storybook ending may be a happily ever after with a man, but Gerwig leaves the door open to her real fulfillment coming from the power of her imagination and creation. (I wrote about this in great depth back in 2020, should you want more of my thoughts.)
Little Women is available on Hulu.
365
“Wanna go real wild when I'm (Bumpin' that) / Meet me in the bathroom if you're (Bumpin' that)”
The closing track of brat (before the three bonus tracks) revels in the joys and dangers of enjoying bumps, be they drugs or music. The track descends into a more jagged-edged sound as it falls further under the spell of the club beats, a rush that reminded me of watching Gaspar Noé’s dance-centric horror film Climax. With gravity-defying camerawork, he plunges us into a dance team’s electrifying rehearsal that quickly turns on its head when someone laces their punchbowl of sangria with LSD. Noé brings a little bit more caution to letting an infectious force take over all your motor functions, but he offsets that with admiration of the joy of watching the human body writhe in ecstasy before it’s all agony.
Climax is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Hello goodbye
“I said, ‘Goodbye’ before you came / I turned around and ran away”
“I think we all feel like indecisive protagonists in our own lives,” The Worst Person in the World star Anders Danielsen Lie admitted when I asked him and co-star Renate Reinsve about the contradictions of their characters. Joachim Trier’s film maintains an uncommon honesty about how we can become our own worst enemies, running away from things at the very moment we should be leaning in. This counterintuitive struggle is also the subject of “Hello goodbye,” the first of three bonus tracks released as a follow-up to brat. It’s a bop about turning left when everything says you should go right, and the gentle techno beat behind it provides an oddly reassuring sense of comfort that it might all work out like it’s supposed to.
The Worst Person in the World is available on Hulu.
Guess
“You wanna guess the color of my underwear / You wanna know what I got going on down there”
Despite what the title might imply, Charli leaves very little room for ambiguity on “Guess,” an unrepentant flaunting of her inviting sexual allure. It’s a provocation dressed up as a proposal. While there’s been progress in society’s tolerance for women doing this boastful braggadocio at the same level men always have, there’s still some element of envelope-pushing involved. The German sex comedy Wetlands shares a similar taboo-bursting spirit as teenage protagonist Helen demonstrates the virtues of living openly and authentically. Her rambunctious libido lands her in hot water, sure, but it also creates the conditions in which bonds born out of fear can dissolve.
Wetlands is available on Tubi.
Spring breakers
“Got my finger on the detonator / Crazy girl shit, gonna go Spring Breakers”
Ahem. *taps the sign*
Spring Breakers is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Be on the lookout for Good One, the first film released by Metrograph Pictures, once it expands. (It opens this Friday in New York at Film at Lincoln Center and — you guessed it — Metrograph.) I had a lovely conversation with filmmaker India Donaldson for Slant Magazine. It was one of those interviews where it just seemed like we were very much on the same wavelength throughout, and that yielded some fascinating insights about the film.
Elsewhere on Decider, I said stream it to Janet Planet on VOD and gave a skip it to Wicked Little Letters on Netflix.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
This is a great listen for all my advertising friends who subscribe:
As someone who frequently uses a great Fresh Air interview to act like I read a book, you can glean a lot from hearing Chris Nashawaty talk about his new tome of film history on how summer 1982 changed the business for science-fiction entertainment:
For a more intellectual read on brat summer, Kyle Chayka expressed the meme moment so brilliantly in The New Yorker:
What qualifies as important is inextricable from what goes viral, and vice versa. “ ‘brat’ summer” has the same weight as an act of political violence, and thus the two are inevitably mixed to create something even more clickable. Meaning matters less than recognizability, the split second of understanding the joke.
Jesse David Fox, Vulture’s comedy writer, penned a fantastic analysis of Ryan Reynolds’ career as our chief annoying update.
Something M. Night Shyamalan-related coming next week, provided I find some time in my schedule to see Trap!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
This is so important to me. Love this!