What is ​‘brat’ cinema?

It’s 2019 and Hous­ton rap­per Megan Thee Stallion’s viral phrase ​‘Hot Girl Sum­mer’ has become some­thing much big­ger than the name of a sin­gle. Insta­gram cap­tions are rife with the three words, a refresh­ing care-free atti­tude has been adopt­ed by all and last-minute flights to trop­i­cal des­ti­na­tions are jus­ti­fied with a smile and shrug: ​‘It’s Hot Girl Sum­mer!’ (bliss­ful times real­ly – we had no idea what was around the cor­ner). Fast for­ward to 2023 – Stal­lion has right­ful­ly trade­marked ​‘Hot Girl Sum­mer’ and Beyoncé’s ​‘RENAIS­SANCE’ has fans fill­ing their wardrobes with metal­lic sil­ver and run­ning to the dance floor in cow­boy boots (the Google search for ​‘sil­ver cow­boy boots’ rose 300% world­wide after the album release). It’s rem­i­nis­cent of 2014 when Tay­lor Swift’s 1989 spurred us towards side-part­ings, den­im and mini-skirts alike – every year has its own pop cul­ture It Girl whose style becomes a call to arms. In 2024, we set aside our dis­co balls and ceased our vogu­ing – now the name on everyone’s lips is Char­li XCX.

In its most basic form, ​‘Brat’ is an LP of 15 songs, along­side a deluxe edi­tion, enti­tled ​‘Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not’. It’s a thump­ing, heady body of work full of dance bangers, unabashed sex­u­al­i­ty, hyp­not­ic lyrics and self-pro­claimed nar­cis­sism. But, much like Beyoncé’s ​‘RENAIS­SANCE’, or Megan Thee Stallion’s sum­mer­time refrain, ​‘Brat’ has become much more than just the music.

The term has tak­en on a life of its own becom­ing part of the cul­tur­al vocab­u­lary as the inter­net hailed the sum­mer of 2024 as ​‘brat sum­mer.’ Proud­ly con­not­ing a messy, ​‘par­ty girl’ atti­tude and cap­tur­ing the hedo­nism and nihilism of the zeit­geist, ​‘brat’ has evolved into a phi­los­o­phy, an ethos – a move­ment. As XCX has explained her­self when describ­ing ​‘brat sum­mer’, ​‘You’re just like that girl […] who feels like her­self but maybe also has a break­down. But kind of like, par­ties through it, is very hon­est, very blunt. A lit­tle bit volatile.’ Put plain­ly, and as XCX her­self agrees, being a mixed-race female US pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee and call­ing Don­ald Trump ​‘weird’ is excep­tion­al­ly ​‘brat.’

Con­cerned with embrac­ing the untamed, grot­ty, angry parts of your­self which Mar­jorie from the office would clutch her pearls at, ​‘brat’ is all about sweaty, dark clubs with sticky floors. It deems Marl­boro Reds the most desir­able acces­so­ry for your black leather out­fit and demands the music is loud enough the speak­ers shake. How­ev­er, ​‘brat’ is not sim­ply about bad tat­toos, cocaine and sun­glass­es – it is laced with exis­ten­tial dread, crip­pled by nos­tal­gia and unable to see past the grotesque of the mod­ern day.

Although Ger­man banks and Boris John­son alike have been slow­ly killing the trend of ​‘brat sum­mer’ by wav­ing the lime green flag like they’re in on the joke (they’re not), and XCX her­self declared the end of ​‘brat sum­mer’, rest assured the spir­it of ​‘brat’ is alive and well. When it comes to cin­e­ma, the ethos of XCX’s album has been around since the begin­ning of film, and although the sum­mer of ​‘brat’ may be com­ing to an end as the leaves turn orange, the essence of the trend is cer­tain­ly stick­ing around across our cin­e­ma screens.

It should be not­ed that Char­li XCX is some­thing of a cinephile her­self, hav­ing cre­at­ed the doc­u­men­tary Alone Togeth­er, which chron­i­cles her attempt to cre­ate an album in 40 days dur­ing the first lock­down of 2020, curat­ed a sea­son this sum­mer at New York’s favourite cult hot spot the Roxy Cin­e­ma and con­tribut­ing the elec­tric ​‘Speed Dri­ve’ to the hot-pink sound­track of last sum­mer: Bar­bie The Album. She’s also co-writ­ten her first film, with Jere­my O. Har­ris, and will make her act­ing debut next year in in Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death remake. Between all this and her avowed love of David Cro­nen­berg, it’s no great leap to think of the films that embody the same reck­less spir­it of XCX’s cer­ti­fied-plat­inum sixth album.

Wild, sweaty, impul­sive flicks have been around since the ear­ly days of film­mak­ing (Bride of Franken­stein is arguably very ​‘brat’), with direc­tors Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos and Ti West pick­ing up the lime green baton in their respec­tive fea­tures Poor Things and Pearl. ​‘Brat Cin­e­ma’ detests any sort of glossy Hol­ly­wood treat­ment. These films are sighs of relief for those who have gen­uine­ly con­sid­ered torch­ing the car of some­one who has wronged them – a rebel­lion against nor­ma­tive fem­i­nin­i­ty, full of Freudi­an Id and eye­lin­er and ask: why be a polite and kind young lady when you can scream and com­mit crimes?

The wild­ly fun, off-beat Heathers from 1988 star­ring Winona Ryder is won­der­ful­ly ​‘brat’ in its overt­ly nar­cis­sis­tic char­ac­ters and relent­less vio­lence in the name of quote-unquote fem­i­nism. Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film Daisies, which sees two rav­en­ous teenage girls embark on a lethal plot in an attempt to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­sume and destroy the mate­ri­al­is­tic world around them, is also spec­tac­u­lar­ly ​‘brat’ in its glee­ful anar­chy and lack of self-consciousness.

Mov­ing into the noughties, Jennifer’s Body, Spring Break­ers, St Trinian’s and The Bling Ring spring to mind as key exam­ples from with­in the Brat Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. Equal parts lip­gloss and blood­stains, these fan favourites ask what would hap­pen if ​‘it girls’ used their beau­ty and influ­ence for worse, the results often being delight­ful­ly gory or sim­i­lar­ly crim­i­nal in scope.

The feel­ing of ​‘brat’ is ever-present in con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma too, as sex­u­al­ly-charged and cyn­i­cal char­ac­ters con­tin­ue to run wild across our screens. Think of the eye-rolling, brat­ty pro­tag­o­nists of Hali­na Reijn’s hor­ror-com­e­dy Bod­ies Bod­ies Bod­ies (to which Char­li XCX con­tributed a song), the chaos and anx­i­ety which radi­ates from every scene of Bot­toms and the 2020 release Shi­va Baby which explodes with hot-head­ed reck­less­ness (you may notice a com­mon thread here in Rachel Sen­nott, who fea­tured in the 365 music video).

Let me put it this way: if a film cel­e­brates anar­chy and absur­di­ty, if it explores the sides of our­selves deemed ​‘unla­dy­like’ with rage and delight, and/​or if it stars a bored teenage girl des­per­ate for inde­pen­dence and a good time – well, chances are you’ve come face-to-face with ​‘brat cinema’.

These films ulti­mate­ly not only offer some­thing engag­ing and dar­ing, but impor­tant­ly res­onate with queer com­mu­ni­ties much as Char­li her­self has been dubbed a ​‘queer icon’. The shiny, het­ero­nor­ma­tive world of Hol­ly­wood hasn’t his­tor­i­cal­ly always res­onat­ed with mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties, yet the out­sider char­ac­ters and lack of regard for tra­di­tion with­in ​‘brat cin­e­ma’ have often pro­vid­ed queer com­mu­ni­ties with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see some­thing more akin to their own lived expe­ri­ences on-screen, so whilst the term – and the film’s under its umbrel­la – per­haps don’t always receive a great lev­el of pres­tige or appre­ci­a­tion, to a vast com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, they are immea­sur­ably important.

The most impor­tant aspect of ​‘brat cin­e­ma’ how­ev­er – cool slo-mos and gory body hor­ror aside – is the fact the term can only be applied in ret­ro­spect. If media com­pa­nies start con­scious­ly pro­duc­ing films with lime green in mind (and it would be no sur­prise to any­one if they did giv­en the cor­po­rate impulse to com­mod­i­fy any­thing ​‘the youth’ enjoy) ​‘brat’ los­es its authen­tic­i­ty, it becomes cor­po­rate jar­gon thrown around in board­rooms – and there is noth­ing less ​‘brat’ than cap­i­tal­ist conglomerates.

It’s sim­i­lar to the way one can­not sit down with the inten­tion to write a cult clas­sic – they spring from sub­cul­tures and a secret lan­guage of ref­er­ences between movie-goers. It is the audi­ence – not the big-wigs – who bring a film to that sta­tus and it is the audi­ence, adorned in their black leather and white vests, who made ​‘brat’ the phe­nom­e­non it has become. The ethos of XCX’s album runs like a sharp elec­tric cur­rent through the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, unleash­ing fun, dar­ing sides to char­ac­ters and nev­er sham­ing them for their (many) wrong­do­ings. Amidst the glam­our and friv­o­li­ty of Hol­ly­wood, films which uphold the brat phi­los­o­phy advo­cate for the trashy, the imper­fect, the joy­ous and res­onate with mar­gin­alised peo­ple across the globe. But what does the future look like for the trend?

If the influ­ence of ​‘brat’ con­tin­ues in the autumn despite XCX’s dec­la­ra­tion – which con­sid­er­ing the half-life of so many of these trends would be astro­nom­i­cal­ly impres­sive – the term could eas­i­ly become part of the crit­i­cal lex­i­con as a short­hand for describ­ing films which uphold its phi­los­o­phy. While the promi­nence of ​‘brat sum­mer’ will sure­ly dwin­dle as the evenings grow dark­er and cold­er, regard­less of what­ev­er will next cap­ture our cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion (Sab­ri­na Carpenter’s new album is already caus­ing com­mo­tion across the meta­verse) ​‘brat cin­e­ma’, cig­a­rette in hand and lips pursed, is here to stay. It’s not just a colour – it’s a way of life.