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The pop star’s new album arrived with a limited-run film in which she debuts a video for “The Fate of Ophelia” and chats about the LP’s songs.
Oct. 3, 2025, 7:42 p.m. ET
Taylor Swift fans congregated at an Upper West Side AMC theater on Friday in “Folklore” cardigans. The seats of an auditorium were adorned with friendship bracelets reading “I’d Lie” and “Reputation” — names, of course, of Swift songs. Instead of trailers, the theater played a preshow of Swift tracks with album art from “The Life of a Showgirl,” the pop star’s newly released 12th original album.
The occasion was “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” Swift’s not-quite-a-movie that’s taking over screens around the world this weekend.
Unlike the concert film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” from 2023, “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” feels more like the bonus features on a DVD. The 89-minute movie includes the video debut for the lead track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” which Swift wrote and directed, and behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot, plus lyric videos for the rest of the songs on the album featuring looped images of Swift in showgirl regalia.
Before each video, Swift gives brief explanations of her thought process behind the song. Here are five highlights:
She wanted ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ to have firm connections to Shakespeare.
The “Ophelia” video opens with Swift mimicking John Everett Millais’s painting of the doomed heroine of “Hamlet.” She then cycles through what she later describes as various types of showgirls. In one scene she’s a 1960s go-go dancer; in another, a Sarah Bernhardt-type theater actress; later she stages a Busby Berkeley-style dance sequence where she’s dressed in retro swimwear. She finally transforms into the pop star we know her to be — catching a football in a hotel hallway while wearing a sparkly minidress.
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The video ends with Swift, half submerged in a tub, the exact image on the album cover. It’s an effort to underscore the Ophelia connection, she says in the film while in conversation with her collaborators, which include the “Killers of the Flower Moon” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto. “So, art history for pop fans.”
