“Melania” is a documentary that will never become reality. It’s a “portrait” of the first lady of the United States, but it’s so orchestrated, airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial. Is it cheap? Momentary, but mostly inert. It feels like the most innocuous snippets from a reality show were strung together. There’s no drama to it. This day should have been called “Living Tradwife Day.”
The film was shot by director Brett Ratner and a trio of top-notch cinematographers over 20 days leading up to (and including) President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. And to the extent that it allows for a whisper of individuality or agency in Melania Trump as a designer. She helps fine-tune the design of her costume. She chose the color of the Inauguration invitation envelopes (a beautiful shade of scarlet). She offers design tips for plates, flowers, and glassware. And during the first Trump presidency, he helped redesign parts of the White House.
In “Melania” all this unfolds as if she were planning a wedding. The film opens with the tension of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” making it sound like the film is coming to the defense of those who have been mean to Melania. But no, “Melania” doesn’t even tread into these controversial waters, as she exudes the fervent celebratory mood of communist China’s state-sanctioned propaganda in the 1960s.
The movie swoops us down to Mar-a-Lago. There, Melania walks out the door, climbs into the back seat of an SUV, and is whisked away to a private red, white, and blue plane emblazoned with the word TRUMP that will be waiting for her at the airport. No matter where she lands, she’ll be in a travel bubble, jetting from a palace in Palm Beach to New York’s Trump Tower, where she’ll meet for a fashion fitting in what looks like the Liberace-designed Titanic’s dining room, then to St. Patrick’s Cathedral right next door (where she attends her mother’s memorial mass), then to the glamorous renovated 19th-century Blair House in Washington, D.C., then back to Trump Tower and back to the nation’s capital.
Melania came out of Slovenia as a teenage fashion model, but was always inferior to Brooke Shields and to Nico. And now, at 55, with her Terminator sunglasses, thick mascara lashes, and ubiquitous 4-inch pumps (she wears them in every scene, even when she’s relaxing on the couch), she has that icy grace for the camera and that thick accent that masks everything she says, giving it all the same emotional neutrality. “Can I make the lapels a little more beige?” she asked designer Hervé Pierre, and he, like everyone else in the room, responded with a cheerful grin of approval, as if Marie Antoinette had asked for cake. The film is pieced together by Melania narrating her life in voiceover, much of it along lines like “This is my last flight as a civilian before returning to public life” or “The people I love must share my beliefs.”
On the surface, the film appears to be devoid of political elements, but Donald Trump does make a lot of appearances, mainly in the inauguration scene in the second half. He walks from event to event hand in hand with Melania, who knows how to dress herself as America’s first arm candy. She and her husband have been together long enough that they have matching grimaces and matching frozen robotic smiles.
But despite its complete absence, politics is eerily present in how earnestly bright and restrained the film is. Effectively canceled due to sexual abuse accusations, starring a director who was never in a position to do anything other than what he was told (i.e., to be directed), and made on an exorbitantly high budget ($40 million, plus $35 million in marketing costs), the film reflects the Trump administration’s control in the manner of a junk-streaming, prefab daily reality show. Its very existence is a pure expression of its control. By the time “Melania” arrives at the inauguration, the film has immersed itself in a series of rituals (candlelight dinner, inauguration itself, luncheon, starlight ball), which feels oddly fitting because filmmaking itself is so ritualized. The atmosphere of experience never enters. And that should tell you something. “Melania” is a top-down designed reality show dedicated to blocking reality, much like the Trump administration.
