![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/a2f4e5a098c9cad916bdf18b1f42f3d34e-Melania-2026-001-CREDIT--Regine-Mahaux--.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n A still from Melania shows the Trumps heading to an inauguration ball.
\n Photo: Regine Mahaux\n <\/p>\n
Melania<\/a> is, supposedly, a revealing portrait of the First Lady\u2019s hectic weeks planning and prepping to retake the White House. The film\u2019s promotional copy promises \u201cexclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments.\u201d What it does reveal, for the most part, are hallways. Not the grand hallways of Trump Tower, Mar-a-Lago, and the White House, but the backstage, never-meant-to-be-seen service corridors linking her public appearances to her private penthouses and revving black cars. At Trump Tower, the mirrored penthouse and its diamond-encrusted gold door lead to dim gray halls and freight elevators that connect to a basement garage on 56th Street. The inauguration sends the Trumps pinballing through the back halls of the Capitol to the backstage halls of ballrooms, event spaces, and an arena, where Melania, dressed in head-to-toe couture, walks tensely against a backdrop of exposed piping and concrete walls.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t forget that she\u2019s a model; she takes the passageways like one, confidently clacking down them in her stilettos. But besides the walk, she does little else in them, revealing either that she has no power, no interest in revealing it, or her sphere of influence is only as big as a dinner table. A meeting at the office of inauguration event planner David Monn<\/a> shows Monn reminding her what she\u2019s doing there. The party is at a venue \u201cwhich, you remember, we chose,\u201d he tells her as they talk about the details of the table setting. \u201cIf you remember, we chose this fabric first,\u201d he says. The insistence feels more like he\u2019s trying to pretend his passive guest was one actively involved than placating a fussy client. At a similar meeting with Tham Kannalikham<\/a>, the interior designer planning the family\u2019s move into the White House, Melania has only one note: the suggestion that Barron Trump, no longer 10 years old, might need a larger bed. It\u2019s all very strange, especially when the voice-over claims a fashion-designer mother taught her that \u201ceven the smallest detail matters\u201d and that her education gave her \u201ca sophisticated design approach.\u201d Shown the invite to the party, she comments, \u201cSo beautiful. You know some people frame it?\u201d Of course he does. Hosting, decorating, and social causes \u2014 these are all in the typical realm of a First Lady, but Melania seems to be sleepwalking through them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not surprising that the promised \u201call-access pass\u201d to Melania shows us no actual decision-making and gives us no actual access \u2014 this is purely a vanity project after all, albeit a very expensive one, for which Amazon reportedly paid $40 million<\/a> to the Trumps for the privilege of covering their production costs and getting distribution rights, an astronomical price for a documentary in any context, not to mention the additional $35 million it has put into promoting it. (Consider, for instance, the $1 million production budget<\/a> of an Oscar-nominated documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) The recurring appearance of the backstage hallway seems to promise us a peek of where cameras don\u2019t normally go, but we don\u2019t even get a sliver of domestic space \u2014 no breakfast tables, no living rooms, not even a half-drunk cup of coffee. The closest we get to Melania\u2019s private room is a shot of her, already dressed, putting on glasses in a walk-in where every door is closed. Does she eat? Does she drink? Does she cook? We don\u2019t know. As for any sense of her life with the president, all we get is a momentary glimpse of a half-open fridge in a private kitchen when Donald rushes in for a 2 a.m. fix of soda. It\u2019s a scene we can only halfway glimpse \u2014 from a camera on the other end of a private hall.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n