Charli XCX's Pandemic Doc 'Alone Together' Is Frustratingly Familiar

Back in January, the UK lifted nearly all pandemic restrictions, and similar policies have since begun arriving here in Canada. Concerts are back, bars and restaurants are open, the news cycle is filled with festival announcements — making it an extremely strange time for Charli XCX to release Alone Together, a documentary about how lockdown is hard.

The fan-focused doc begins in late 2019, with pop songwriter Charli XCX on a tour that is quickly brought to a halt by the pandemic. What follows is too predictable to bother repeating in much detail: she livestreams herself doing at-home activities on Instagram, decides to make a lockdown album, stresses out about the news, etc.

Much of Alone Together plays out from the perspective of Charli's fans, with talking heads interviews taking place over Zoom and DM messages popping up on the screen as a reminder of the extremely online vibe of spring 2020.

Charli sets out about making her (excellent) album how i'm feeling now, and vlogs her process while her fans watch. She sends beats back and forth with producers around the world, talks about missing her friends, attempts to simulate a party atmosphere within the confines of her self-isolation space, asks fans things like "so how has your quarantine been going?" and generally feels all the same things we all felt two years ago.

Dedicated fans of Charli might enjoy the glimpse into her creative process. Then again, she already livestreamed a lot of this stuff on Instagram, so it probably doesn't need to be repackaged into a traditional documentary format.

Moments of intense vulnerability — specifically a scene when Charli talks about her experiences in therapy — are gripping precisely because they aren't necessarily specific to lockdown. Much of the film concerns her relationship with boyfriend Huck Kwong, whom she has since broken up with; the mere fact that she's releasing a documentary about her ex-boyfriend is far more interesting than anything shown on screen here.

As of this writing, the pandemic still isn't over, and the world will likely continue to live in the shadow of COVID-19 for years. That being said, it's probably time filmmakers found new ways of sharing their pandemic experiences, since Charli XCX: Alone Together feels frustratingly familiar.