The Melania in “Melania” Likes Her Gilded Cage Just Fine

My husband and I saw the documentary Melania, at 10:45 a.m. am on the Upper West Side, which, I admit, was not a fair test of its audience appeal: There were only six people there besides us. They were all gone by the end of the film – perhaps late journalists, like me – so I missed the opportunity to interview them to get their answers. I caught a middle-aged woman who showed up early for the next screening, well armed with a huge bucket of popcorn. Why was she there, I asked? To see Melania of course! What did she like about Melania? “She’s so confident and she does so much to help people.” Confident, I give it to you.

I used to feel sorry for the wives of rich and powerful men. I saw them as birds trapped in gilded cages, who had made a terrible mistake in their youth, and who now had to endure endless rounds of tedious socializing with a frozen smile on their botoxed faces, not to mention having to be nice to their horrible husbands, all of whom were probably having sex with prostitutes. I wasn’t alone, remember all those Free Melania memes? The way people kept retweeting pictures of her looking tired and sullen and not holding Donald’s hand? Quite a few women I know believed Melania was unhappy but couldn’t leave him for some unlikely reason, like she wouldn’t have money or he would have her murdered. According to them, what century are we in? Melinda Gates and Mackenzie Scott divorced their unsatisfactory husbands and are now living their dreams as fabulously wealthy philanthropists.

Melania, this documentary shows perfectly, loves her golden cage very well. After all, it allows her to produce this movie featuring her clothes, her hair, her shoes and her complexion, and how many women can say the same? Could you, middle-aged American women, spend all day wearing six-inch stiletto heels without ever wincing or groaning? The rewards for aching feet and a wrinkle-free face are on full display: Melania is cared for every minute by people paid to be deferential and pleasant; Everything around her is beautiful and expensive, and she has all the designer dresses she wants. She talks about helping children with Queen Rania of Jordan and the harms of screens for children with Brigitte Macron. She looks somber and serious as she places lilies on the Arlington graves of three soldiers killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan – take that, Joe Biden! It’s all your fault! If she has to spend a few hours pretending to care about the tablecloths for the inaugural dinner and the golden eggs and caviar as a starter, well, that’s not too high a price to pay for luxury and admiration, is it?

As you might expect, the film is full of unintentional ironies. Melania is known for being a private person, but she is making a film about herself. She says she loves the White House, with all its rich history, while she destroys Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and her husband demolishes the East Wing. She says she cares about young people, while her husband destroys USAID, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of African children. She recalls that she is an immigrant, just like her French friend Hervé Pierre, who we see designing her inaugural ball gown, and Tham Kannalikham, the interior designer of the White House, who arrived from Laos at the age of 2. And of course, there are his parents. (Her mourning for her mother, whose first death anniversary occurs during filming, is a rare moment when she expresses her deep feelings.) Meanwhile, her husband presides over the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, perhaps longer than she. The icing on the cake: director Brett Ratner was persona non grata in Hollywood after being accused of sexual misconduct by six women – a way of reminding us of the ongoing scandal of the Epstein files.

I know there is a real human being hidden in those severe, stiff outfits and under that famous black hat that hides half of her face and makes her look like a sinister fembot or perhaps a very confident assassin. This is, after all, the first lady who wore a jacket painted with I REALLY DONN’T CARE DO U during her trip to the Mexican border. She is the first lady to have plagiarized a speech from her enemy Michelle Obama. And – my favorite Melania moment – ​​it was the first lady complaining to her former close friend Stephanie Winston Wolkoff about having to “scramble” at Christmas at the White House. “Who cares about Christmas stuff and decorations? » Remember those scary blood-red trees that seemed to come from Dracula’s own forest?

This Melania was distant, haughty, mysterious, prey to grievances and resentment. She didn’t even try to curry favor with the public. It was a little weird, but much more interesting than this dutiful fashion plate delivering platitudes about how “at the end of the day, family is what really matters.” On the other hand, this Melania managed to get Jeff Bezos to pay $45 million for the right to make this absurd infomercial, and $35 million to promote it. Bezos may lose most of it, but (sorry, Dems) the film is on track to become one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. In a family of champion tricksters, Melania stands her ground.