A few things alt-pop mainstay/icon/HBIC (Head ‘Brat’ in Charge) Charli XCX and Party Girl (1995) star Parker Posey have in common: one could say they’re alike, they say they’ve got the same hair, and the gays would grant either of them a pass to say that word.
Almost thirty years after Party Girl’s release, Charli XCX embodies this spirit in her latest pop phenomenon and Album of the Year contender, brat. The “Brat Summer” everyone has been living for the past two months is an average week for Mary (Posey), the blasé New York City protagonist of the independent dramedy.
The two queer masterpieces, led by the respective brunette divas, are more alike than not—both are partially inspired by the gay club scenes of their time and the women who found themselves in those spaces and beyond. The lyrics in brat are more nuanced than just recitations of club nights and cutting lines (both kinds), resonating deeply with the themes of the 90s cult classic film and forming an engaging symmetry with the complex tracks from the summer smash album.
Everything is Romantic
“In a place that can make you change / Fall in love again and again”
At the start Party Girl, we find Mary on the precipice of her great change, hosting a rave in her top floor loft that catapults us into the real meat of the film and its themes. She’s just living that life carefree, glamorizing her poverty in the name of partying.
As she proclaims, she is broke, unemployed, and talentless. And yet, she parties on—at her apartment, a local club, in the library where she works, a loading dock, and even in the middle of the street where her Lebanese crush Mustafa (Omar Townsend) works as a falafel vendor.
Bumping random drugs from guests at her party, prancing around in her designer clothes while her landlord awaits her rent money, dancing and singing rhythmic nonsense as she fantasizes about Mustafa while baking (read: burning) a loaf of bread—the romantics of a New York City party girl are unmatched.
365
“No never go home / don’t sleep don‘t eat, just put it on repeat”
Before there was Julia Fox, before there was Alex Consani, Mary embodied the party girl lifestyle through and through. The opening sequence finds Mary at her true heights, hosting and cashing in on her guests.
The production on ‘365’ and Charli’s vision for the “super club” setting is in perfect tune with Mary’s trip on the unknown party drug that takes her from the highest highs to the lowest pits at her now-outdated ‘Arabian Nights’ themed kiki in the film’s third act.
Mary mimics the belly dancing of her absent entertainers, flailing across the floor with her arms up, bumping and bouncing around on her party guests til her face is numb. The dizzying frenzy of folks and chaotic energy is enough to knock her knees out from under her. Even lyrically, Mary embodies the heady attitude of this newfound philosophy—the arrogance of a brat.
Charli asserting, “Who the f–k are you? I’m a brat when I’m bumping that” is equivalent to Posey’s matter-of-fact delivery of “The way you behave lowers my worth,” to on-again-off-again boyfriend, Nigel (Liev Schrieber). She stands outside the club, licking a lime green lollipop denying love to a man who is beneath her—a deific model of divadom.
Apple
“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core / From all the things passed down from all the apples coming before”
A recurring statement in the film is Judy (Sasha von Scherlor) scolding Mary for being just like her mother. Charli once thought ‘Apple’ was the most underrated upon the album’s release, but the song has taken off thanks to the viral TikTok dance, debuting at no. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100, two months after coming out.
Similarly, the movie thumps along just like the sleeper hit that bumps to the beat of video game synths. Maternal trauma is very much rooted in both projects. As much as they are explorations of the self, Party Girl and ‘brat’ are also meditations on the protaginists’ relationship to the women around them: in Charli’s case, it’s peers like Lorde, Julia Fox, and her mother; for Mary, it’s her mother, her aunt Judy, club-owner Rene (Donna Mitchell), and the idea of womanhood itself.
Mary has an estranged and oftentimes idealistic view on her mother, who died in a car accident and was a notorious party girl herself. Many of Mary’s lowest moments involve reflections on her own mothers inadequacies. While operating with a high self-worth, her view is complicated by her own insecurities as well as Judy’s remarks of their shared ineptitude and Mary’s admiration of her mother.
After spending all night mastering the Dewey Decimal system, Mary excitedly approaches Judy with fresh news about her librarian abilities, only for Judy to dismiss her excitement, assuming the news is another tale of drugged-up antics and dancing ‘til dawn.
Judy (played by director Daisy von Scherler Mayer‘s own mother) has more than enough to say about Mary’s mother, “You know how I know? You are just like your mother. She was a woman with no common sense.”
And in a way, Mary agrees, “You wanna know what we’re good at? Maintaining when we’re f–ked up, applying makeup, parting, flirting, making stuff up, throwing parties and having fun,” she relents tearfully to Mustafa.
Girl, so confusing
“It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl.”
This song seems to be the central thesis of the film. Mary is afraid of having accomplished nothing before her 24th birthday (yikes!) or worse, becoming just like her mother (see: Apple.) Just as she cracks the Dewey Decimal System and gains her colleagues’ trust, she consummates her love with Mustafa in the book store and fumbles her librarian job in the process due to her irresponsibility. Her insecurities guide her through the most complicated life path, bouncing from determined and educated to drearily deflated by her own self-consciousness.
“Melville Dewey hired women as librarians because he believed the job didn’t require any intelligence. It was a woman’s job,” Judy shouts after Mary mistakenly leaves the windows open, ruining many library books and resulting in her termination.
However, at the start of the film, Judy emphasizes to Mary how librarians require a master’s degree, organizational skills, and a seriousness that Mary lacks. As antagonistic as Judy can be, these complicated approaches to what it means to be a librarian are just a manifestation of her own complex views on womanhood. Men (and, therefore, society at large) may think this thing works one way, but actually it is all far more complicated than that.
Why can’t she party and also be a useful, educated leader of her community? At her lowest point—evicted, unemployed, broken up with, and drugged—she returns to the worthless Nigel, making out in her alley before denying him entry to her home. As she circles the drain and reclaims her personhood, she takes her career as a librarian more seriously.
For Mary, her two selves cannot coexist. In the end, she chooses her more responsible side, but parties on with the best of them.
360
“I’m your favorite reference, baby.”
The film’s impact is profound and widespread but shockingly undiscussed. Vintage Vivian Westwood corsets, vibrant crimson coats and satin gloves are now in part an unintentional homage to Posey’s style and the mastery of costume designer, Michael Clancey. Clancey curates Mary’s closet by linking the ratty vintage fashion with archival designer attire that TikTok fashion influencers would absolutely melt over.
However, unless you scrolled through the many Tumblr gifs of Posey posing in her leopard print mini coat, you’ve likely never seen this on anyone’s Letterboxd Top 4.
Mary herself is an amalgamation of glamazon party girls of the nineties that Clancey, director Daisy von Scherler Mayer, and co-writer Harry Brickmayer encountered in the 90s club scene—much like how Charli attempts to celebrate clubbers like herself. Self-awareness and self-expression are the main compasses for both projects and as such, arrived at the perfect time for girls (and gays and theys, et. al) to release themselves from the shackles of insecurity while also addressing what those confinements were.
They’re funky, absurd, beautiful, and heartfelt. ‘Brat’ is intrinsically a descendant of Mary and the many women she represents.
You can’t be a brat without complexities and Mary knows that well. Sure, she ditched her friends and broke up with a guy because he didn’t match her worth. She also offers her home to her unhoused DJ friend, and even properly categorizes his music collection in an effort to ease his search, and improve her applicable skills.
Still, she is a brat in every sense of its traditional form: “an ill-mannered annoying child.” She’s at times unlikable—whiny and lazy, entitled and superficial. And even in Charli’s reconfiguration of the term, Mary fits in just like a satin glove—she is just a girl who, “like, feels herself, but, like, maybe has a breakdown, but kind of, like, parties through it.”
