FKA twigs – Cellophane
2019 · Directed by Andrew Thomas Huang
649K Likes
Best comments
1.“I want a strip club like this. Pole dancing and depression.”
More comments
- 2.“The noise of her heels on the floor at the beginning is my sexuality.”
- 3.“Came looking for a meme and found a genuinely, deeply beautiful fucking song, lol.”
The story
FKA twigs learned to pole dance for this. She trained for months, then opened the video with a full routine on a 360-degree set with a mirrored floor, while director Andrew Thomas Huang spun the camera the opposite way around her. Strong, raw and a little hard to watch, in the good way.
Then it goes mythic. Huang built it as an Icarus story in three worlds: the stage she performs on, a heaven she reaches for and an underworld she falls into. She climbs toward a huge flying creature wearing her own face, drops through into the mud, and two women coat her in clay so she can be rebuilt. Production designer Fiona Crombie built a cold crater set full of mud for the last shot on the schedule. Twigs was spent by then. The shivering is real. The effects house Analog made the creature from Huang's concept art, and twigs herself suggested hanging upside down to grab the camera.
Cellophane was the lead single from Magdalene, a spare piano ballad about love coming apart, and several outlets tied it to the end of her engagement to Robert Pattinson. Huang said the story was shaped by her health struggles and the public scrutiny. Pitchfork named it the best music video of 2019. It won four UK Music Video Awards and was nominated for the Grammy for Best Music Video. Grace on the pole, then grace in the dirt.
