When is the weekend’s highest-grossing movie not a movie? When it’s an extended advertisement for Taylor Swift’s new album, featuring a dazzling music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” — cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto (Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon), choreography by Mandy Moore (La La Land) — and lyric videos for every other song on The Life of a Showgirl, each one introduced and pre-explained by Swift. That’s all The Listening Party of a Showgirl is, but fans of the popular singer-songwriter clearly wanted to attend this party, driving it to the top of the box-office charts.
The program opens with a literal advertisement for the exclusive edition of the album at Target stores, featuring Swift as a director barking at her recalcitrant star (also Swift). Once that’s out of the way, Swift speaks directly to the audience, welcoming them to the Not Movie, before the “Ophelia” video plays for the first time (this will happen again).
The video imagines the singer as a painter’s model, a stage star, a movie-musical queen, and — of course — a showgirl, and following that, the next hour or so involves behind-the-scenes footage of Swift directing and performing in “Ophelia,” interspersed with lyric videos for every other song, in album order, from the rest of The Life of a Showgirl. Those lyric videos offer loops of Swift in various costumes from “Ophelia” (or from the album-cover photo shoot), playing over and over again as lyrics animate the frame, part kaleidoscope, part stuttering screensaver.
We close with another look at “The Fate of Ophelia,” and admittedly, that second go is a richer experience after witnessing the nuts and bolts of its creation. Swift’s introductions to each song offer some personal insight into the lyrics, but since those lyrics are fairly straightforward, the insights don’t add a lot. A notable exception, and the film’s biggest laugh, is Swift’s truncated, G-rated explanation — followed by a few seconds of her staring down the camera with an unbreakable deadpan — that “Wood” is about superstition, when the internet has already dissected the song as her paean to her fiancé’s penis.
This is the sort of for-fans-only programming that defies criticism or analysis by outsiders. But it is quite plainly, a shareholder’s meeting, a press kit made public, in the vein of Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me… Now, only less cinematic. If you wanted to attend The Release Party, you probably did so with enthusiasm, and if you didn’t, well, there’s a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie playing right next door.
Director: Taylor Swift (“The Fate of Ophelia” video)
Screenwriter: Taylor Swift (“The Fate of Ophelia” video)
Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto (“The Fate of Ophelia” video)
Choreography: Mandy Moore (“The Fate of Ophelia” video)
Production companies: AMC Theatres, Variance Films
In English
89 minutes
