{"id":259886,"date":"2026-01-30T20:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T20:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259886\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T20:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T20:30:09","slug":"melania-review-trump-film-is-a-gilded-trash-remake-of-the-zone-of-interest-melania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259886\/","title":{"rendered":"Melania review \u2013 Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest | Melania"},"content":{"rendered":"

My audience with Melania<\/a> is booked for Friday lunchtime at a retail park on the outskirts of Bristol, inside a large cinema which appears to have been swept and emptied in readiness. When Brett Ratner\u2019s contentious, Amazon-backed documentary previewed at the White House last weekend, the guestlist included Mike Tyson, Queen Rania of Jordan and the president himself. Today it\u2019s just me in the room and Melania on the screen. It makes for a more intimate and exclusive affair.<\/p>\n

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film\u2019s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us \u2013 with agonising glacial slowness \u2013 through the preparations for her husband\u2019s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the \u201ccandlelit dinner\u201d to the \u201cstarlight ball\u201d, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. \u201cCandlelight and black tie and my creative vision,\u201d she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. \u201cAs first lady, children will always remain my priority,\u201d she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.<\/p>\n

No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn\u2019t it. It\u2019s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn\u2019t have a single redeeming quality. I\u2019m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.<\/p>\n

And so it goes on. Melania moves through the action like a listless automaton, talking constantly but saying nothing, squired from Mar-a-Lago to Trump Tower to her final destination, the White House. What drama there is chiefly hinges on her concern that her white blouse is too loose at the neck and needs to be cut and then tightened, much to the consternation of the fitters. Melania misses her mother, she says, but she loves Michael Jackson and Barron and possibly her husband as well, although Trump himself is mostly a background presence here, shuffling in at intervals to brag about his election win and complain that his inauguration clashes with the televised college football playoffs. \u201cThey probably did it on purpose,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s dispiriting, it\u2019s deadly and it\u2019s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner\u2019s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer\u2019s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government. \u201cWhite and gold \u2013 that\u2019s so you,\u201d purrs one of her lickspittles as she busies herself with the colour-scheme for the ball and the incoming first lady allows that yes indeed, this is true.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no spoiler to reveal that phew, thank heavens, Trump\u2019s second inauguration goes swimmingly well in the end. This despite the unfortunate clash with the college football game. This despite the infuriating looseness of the first lady\u2019s white blouse. The preparations are exhausting but the euphoria of the moment sees her through, all the way to the starlight ball where she briefly boogies along to the Village People\u2019s YMCA. \u201cBeing awake for 22-hours felt like nothing,\u201d she gushes, which is nice to hear and good for her. But the fun\u2019s not infectious and the guests are a nightmare, and two hours of Melania feels like pure, endless hell.<\/p>\n

Melania is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My audience with Melania is booked for Friday lunchtime at a retail park on the outskirts of Bristol,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-259886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}