I was a huge fan of Selena’s for years and I feel like I learned barely anything new from the documentary. If anything, her Rolling Stone interview was a lot more insightful than anything that made the documentary. Pretty much everything featured in it was stuff that had already been made public (the reason behind the tour cancellation, being tired of the industry, mental hospital, her fallout with Mandy etc.) with barely any added context. For me this documentary was a perfect representation of Selena’s image: controlled and will only show you what she wants you to see. She’s known to have one of the best PR teams in the business for a reason.
It makes no sense to me that it was filmed over a 6-year timeline yet we only got about 40 minutes (if that) of footage from 2016-2018 and most of it was from the Revival tour. Her final Instagram post before surgery that was dedicated to her fans and the actual surgery itself was a huge moment in her life and yet they barely mentioned it. Instead we got around an hour of footage from the last two years of her complaining about being in the industry?? Not even a mention of her Spanish EP, Rare Beauty, OMITB or her UEFA performance. Selena + Chef and the Rare album were essentially blink and you’ll miss them moments.
I get that the whole point of the documentary was to talk about Selena’s struggle with her mental but it feels like there was so much more that could’ve been included. They briefly touched on her struggles with breaking out from the Disney image at the start but there was a lot more to be desired. Both Miley and Demi have openly talked about having major identity issues and trauma whilst being at Disney whilst Selena has mostly spoken fondly on her Disney days in the past, so it was interesting to see a completely different narrative in the documentary. It would’ve been interesting to mention her role in Spring Breakers here too as it was her first “adult” job post-Disney.
It’s not that surprising that they didn’t delve much into her relationship with Justin but it felt slightly disingenuous to barely mention it at all. Her relationship with Abel wasn’t even mentioned once either, which could’ve made for an interesting contrast (even if it was just for PR).
Overall, it wasn’t a terrible documentary but it felt empty and incomplete. I read somewhere that the director was worried that it was too long and ended up cutting a whole hours worth of content before the final version and I think that decision has ultimately hindered the final product. It really would’ve benefited from being a two-part series with one half focusing on 2016-2018 and the other half on 2019-now. That being said I don’t think the latter half should’ve taken up as much runtime as it did in general.
I doubt it’ll happen but I really hope they release the directors cut.
victim era
. Once a victim, always a victim.
