Selena Gomez Documentary Tackles Tough Topics
by EG
Documentaries about pop star music tours are not uncommon on streaming platforms, but a new doc focusing on Only Murders in the Building star Selena Gomez is a bit different than most. Not just a marketing tooll for a new album or tour, the film ventures into the uncomfortable territory of Gomez's mental health and her struggle with the pressures of her job. The result is a doc that feels more real than just another celebrity vanity project. Read on for details.
Before Selena Gomez released Rare in 2020, the singer maintained a relatively low profile. She barely did interviews and briefly deactivated her social media accounts. The album — a candy-sweet assemblage of anthemic, electro-pop self-love hits — marked a shift in the star’s relationship to the public. Gomez would no longer be haunted by her Disney past or her tumultuous relationships. She would be honest about her struggles with the autoimmune disease lupus, self-worth, depression and anxiety. She was taking control, reshaping her image on her terms.
It’s unsurprising, then, that after the album came a documentary. Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me is a companion piece to Rare, the next step in the star’s search for authentic self-expression. The documentary, which opens this year’s AFI Film Festival on Wednesday, Nov. 2, observes Gomez from an intimate vantage point, watching her negotiate health struggles that shortened her Revival tour in 2016, chronicling her hiatus from public life and grappling with questions about what comes next.
Unlike other music documentaries (a popular format, as of late, for recalibrating celebrity images), Gomez’s project operates at a rawer, grittier register. It’s textured by the 30-year-old star’s relative youth and her attempts to communicate honestly, instead of perfectly. One’s 20s — a decade that feels defining even though it isn’t — have a discomforting quality to them, like a seat you can’t quite settle into. The pressure to perform stability, ease and assuredness, to leave the too small confines of childhood and embrace the uncertainty of the rest of your life, undoubtedly mounts when you add public scrutiny and the invasive gaze of paparazzi.
My Mind & Me makes the parameters of Gomez’s life clear from its opening moments. The documentary, directed by Alek Keshishian (1991 Madonna doc Truth or Dare), begins with a brief moment of Gomez on a press run before economizing the story of the pop star’s Revival tour. In both of these montages, Gomez’s exhaustion is felt. She is tired, she says at one point; she doesn’t understand what she’s doing, she says at another. These scenes — anxious, candid, swelling with emotions — signal the kind of documentary experience one should expect: This is a journey of watching the singer unravel before stitching herself back together.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.