Parents' Guide to Melania

Clad in enormous sunglasses and stiletto heels, Melania Trump stalks through this supposedly revealing portrait of her life, giving away exactly nothing of her private thoughts. More than anything, Melania brings to mind the grand couvert, a French tradition particularly prominent in Louis XIV's Court of Versailles in which citizens of all social classes were invited to watch the royal family eat. Stiff and ceremonial, these public dinners were designed to dazzle the public as well as to comfort them: Our king is just like us, only rich! So if Melania's fans and foes alike find watching her pick out tablecloths and dresses for the 2025 Inauguration Day to be a comfort and an inspiration, this cinematic grand couvert has done its job. But know that you'll finish Melania knowing its subject no better than when you started.

Melania's opaque, precisely engineered feel is typical of documentaries produced with the input of their subject, but it's difficult to separate this vague quality from Melania herself. Most of Melania's 104-minute running time is consumed by images of her walking: down long corridors, into and out of motorcade vehicles, up and down the boarding stairs of private jets. Without a hair out of place and with elaborate makeup intact, she covers her eyes with dark glasses to discuss the details of dinner parties and what she'll wear. She makes tiny tweaks to designers' plans, insisting that a jacket nip in more at the waist or that her "home country" (unnamed; it's Slovenia) be represented in the engravings for crystal glasses. Intermittently, Melania narrates well-rehearsed pronouncements over the footage: "Walking into the Capitol's rotunda, I felt the weight of history intertwined with my own journey as an immigrant, a reminder of why I respect this nation so deeply." This innocuous-sounding statement is jarring when viewed both in the political context in which Melania has been released and the reports that have emerged that her personal paycheck for this film was around $28 million. At least in this aspect—i.e., a current first lady profiting from her position, which is a notable break with tradition— Melania is utterly singular.