Melania: Queen of camp As the world burns, she preens

Arriving to see Melania in the LGBT+ mecca that is Brighton, the cinema was practically empty. It’s a shame, because in theory the woman at the heart of the film is a gay man’s dream.

She has a heavy Eastern European accent, a marvellous embonpoint, and a resting bitch-face to die for. She has survived the infidelities of her philandering husband with statuesque dignity and proved unbiddable by his aides. Famously, Melania Trump does not stand by her man. Indeed, most of the time, she doesn’t stand within 1,000 feet of him, sequestering herself mysteriously in Trump Tower instead. And when out and about in the world, she likes to send oblique messages by means of her wardrobe choices: like that time she wore a pussy bow to the pussy-grabber-in-chief’s presidential debate, or when she went to Africa dressed in a pith helmet. In other words, she is camper than a row of tents.

As Sontag told us in her essay on the subject, the purest examples of camp “are unintentional; they are dead serious”. And there is no one more serious than the former Melanija Knavs. Even before all the Botox, her face was rigid with cultural inexpressivity. Despite — or perhaps because of — the humourlessness, her 2024 book Melania: A Memoir is possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever read. There, she describes her journey to the White House in phrased culled from the crib notes of a Miss World contestant, always talking about her own “dedication”, “elegance” and “poise”, and uttering sentences like “Confident in balancing many roles, I refused to confine myself to compartments and aspired to serve as a beacon of inspiration for other women”.

In fact, though, there wasn’t much feminine inspiration on offer during her husband’s first term, and her pet projects often unfortunately misfired. Her inaugural speech for the presidential campaign, written for her by an aide, turned out to be plagiarised from Michelle Obama. Once Trump was in office, her grammatically unorthodox brainchild, the “Be Best” campaign, was pilloried for its mentally scattered focus — “the well-being of children, online safety, and tackling opioid abuse” — and a lack of quantifiable results. There is also the fact that her husband, not much known for online safety himself, tends to suck up all the air in the room. Until now, the only place the First Lady seems to have received real adulation is in her Slovenian hometown. There, according to her unofficial biographer, sausages are sold with an “M” on them and a local shoemaker has made “a Melania-inspired bedroom slipper that is sparkly grey flannel with a white faux-fur pom-pom on top”.

Presumably she hoped that the Amazon-backed film, tracing various aesthetic and philanthropic doings in the weeks leading up to Trump’s second inauguration, would usher in a new dawn of reputational fabulousness. It was released on Friday, and so far seems to be going about as well as the time she wore that jacket to the migrant child detention centre. The timing is distinctly off, what with government agents executing protestors on the streets of Minnesota, and her husband featuring in newly released Epstein files. Indeed, for those who loathe Trump and all he stands for, the film presumably reads a bit like Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest: documenting the domestic idyll of a serenely well-situated hausfrau, while literal atrocities are being committed next door.

Still, as Sontag also wrote: “Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility.” In order to properly appreciate Melania, perhaps we should forget all that distracting guilt-by-association and try to imagine what it will look like as a cultural object decades hence. And I suggest that — much like the woman herself — it will look very homosexual-friendly indeed.

The film starts in the gorgeous Florida ocean, before the camera sweeps towards Mar-a-Lago and a pair of spike heels getting into a huge car. As it speeds along, Melania sitting stony-faced in the back, “Gimme Shelter” is playing and Mick Jagger is singing that war, rape, and murder are just “a shot away”. One hopes it’s just a heavy-handed reference to the Trump assassination attempt, but who really knows?

Before long we are in Washington, and Melania is stiffly walking into various rooms to talk to gay men about tableware and dresses. Wind is always unexpectedly ruffling her hair, even indoors. In the voiceover, the beauty-contestant phrasing is back: “every day I lead with nurturing and devotion”; “my creative vision is always clear”, and so forth.

With her team, she discusses a pre-inauguration candlelit dinner that she is micromanaging. The colour scheme will be her signature white and gold, and each guest will be served a spray-painted gold egg filled with caviar. An example of the Goldfingered egg is produced for her, looking disgustingly inedible but gratifyingly expensive.

Someone tells Melania that there will be only five hours to transition the White House between “first families”. The Bidens’ personal furniture will be taken out and the Trumps’ put in. Perhaps used to dealing with elderly presidents, a housekeeper puts a little too much emphasis on the fact that “floors are washed, furniture is steamed”.

Despite the potentially high-octane subject matter, the general ambience of the film is calm verging on octogenarian. The director Bret Ratner was best known for the Rush Hour action trilogy before he got MeTooed, so this must have been a creative leap. At times the twinkling background piano music and murmured Slovenian consonants come close to inducing ASMR. Most of the drama, such as it is, concerns the tailoring of Melania’s inauguration outfits: will her jacket collar get raised just as she likes it? Can her hatband be sufficiently narrowed in time?

There are various stagey moments where one senses the sheer desperation of the makers for some emotional intensity from their subject — meeting an Israeli hostage, watching Californian wildfires on TV, closing St Patrick’s Cathedral down so Melania can theatrically light a candle for her dead mother. Occasionally there is a batsqueak flicker of feeling on display, but for viewers used to endless celebrity emoting it must surely be inaudible. Perched next to a Renoir, she talks to Donald on the phone just after he has won the presidency for the second time. “Did you watch it?” asks the President-elect. Melania impassively says she hasn’t — she has had “meetings all day”.

Conversations with her husband are generally stilted. The pair talk politely but distantly, as if they haven’t met for months — which may well be true. But equally, perhaps they always talked to each other like this. In her book, Melania recalls a “private moment” just after Donald has won his first election. “’Congratulations,’ I said. ‘What an achievement. All those other people . . . and you won. You’re the president of the United States of America.’ ‘And you’re the First Lady,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’”

Things are hardly better during a Zoom with Brigitte Macron, a fellow high-profile Euro-wife described in Melania’s memoir in improbably glowing terms, making it sound as though they are characters in Jules et Jim (“Brigitte and I shared a delightful camaraderie, marked by warmth and fun… Together, we embraced the unknown, turning every moment into an exciting adventure”). During this conversation, viewers discover that the #BeBest campaign will be back for a second term too. “Anxiety and mental health are growing all around the world”, Melania tells Brigitte. To deal with this, she wants to “foster relationships with like-minded leaders and form a coalition”. Brigitte helpfully feigns enthusiasm: “I am sure that things are going to move. I am sure of it because you are very strong”.

On one level, this film is harmless nonsense from an over-indulged but basically well-intentioned queen. On another, viewed with an awareness of the current affordability crisis in the States and mentally juxtaposing all that marble, gilt, and crystal, it seems that a second revolution might be needed. No one could say Melania hasn’t leaned into the pomp and circumstance listed in the job description, but I wonder whether the MAGA base will tolerate such high levels of conspicuous consumption. Her pal Brigitte should probably fill her in on what happened to Marie Antoinette.

So, Melania probably won’t be a populist sensation, nor, obviously, will it be a hit with the bourgeoisie. But mark my words: let time do its work and eventually this film will become the new Grey Gardens. Once Melania’s distracting OH is out of the picture, in a few years’ time we may finally be able to discern the woman properly; to sense the comic potential that was there all along; to see the woodenness for the trees. In fact, she is the epitome of Sontag’s vision of camp: style over substance; aesthetics above morality; all filler no killer; heroically focusing on the exact positioning of table settings, while the world around her burns.

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