‘Halftime’: Jennifer Lopez, the actress and singer that no one took seriously until she was 50 years old | TV

Just four days ago, Jennifer Lopez collected two awards at the MTV Movie & TV awards gala, one for best song for On My Waysoundtrack of his latest film Marry meand another throughout his career, where he delivered a speech that surprised many. “I want to thank the people who gave me joy and those who broke my heart. To those who were true and those who lied to me. I want to thank the way I lied to myself, because that’s how I knew I had to grow up. I want to thank disappointment and failure for teaching me to be strong. To all the people who told me to my face or when I wasn’t in the room, that I couldn’t do this. I really don’t think I could have done it without you,” the actress said through tears.

That feeling of having reached the top, training, working hard and rowing against the current despite the criticism, is what emerges from the almost more than hour and a half that it lasts. Halftime, a documentary where the singer from the Bronx, in the first person, recounts her career with the preparations for the performance at the 2020 Super Bowl, where she performed alongside Shakira, as a backdrop. “I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be heard, seen and taken seriously and now I have this incredible opportunity to show the world who I am,” Lopez hopes, in the first minutes of the film, about her show on the NFL Finals.

The film, which has been released in the tribeca festival this June 8, it can also be seen on Netflix from the 14th. It includes an interview with Jennifer Lopez, with home videos, photos and memories of childhood and beginnings of the artist born in the Bronx (New York), with images shot between July 2019 and January 2021, when the singer performed This Land is My Land during the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House. “The madness is that everything I’ve dreamed of in my career is happening at the same time like an avalanche,” confesses Lopez.

The avalanche referred to by the actress, who in 1997 would star in her first film, Selenawas plagued in 2019 with red carpets, filming, concerts and rehearsals: the character of Ramona, in Wall Street Scammerswould earn her a Golden Globe nomination, 22 years after receiving it for her portrayal of the Texan artist, who ultimately did not win.

To that campaign and obstacle course that are the awards in Hollywood —despite not getting an Oscar nomination— rehearsals for the 14-minute show at the Super Bowl break, in addition to the filming of Marry me. And all after having blown out the candles of its 50th anniversary: ​​”I feel that my life has only just begun,” he assures before the cameras on July 24.

Jennifer Lopez is not the first American singer and actress who dares to tell her life and her truth through a documentary. Lady Gaga would already do it, in 2017 in Gaga: Five Foot Two —title that refers to his height—, and Taylor Swift in 2020 with Miss Americana. A formula, which in both cases, worked to discover aspects of the life of the artists that were unknown to the general public.

If the protagonist of A star has been born showed her fight against the chronic physical pain she suffers and Swift confessed her eating disorders, Lopez wanted to vindicate in this film her artistic career as a woman and a Latina, considered the voice of Hispanics in the United States, who already number 50 million people in the country.

That 14-minute show at the intermission of the Super Bowl was not just for JLo to get on stage to “move her ass and do belly dancing,” in the words of the interpreter; For the artist, it was a unique opportunity to launch a political message against Trump’s United States and the former president’s immigration policies, which put migrant children in cages and separated them from their relatives on the border with Mexico.

Some cages that JLo would use in the final act of her show, from where her daughter Emme would appear and then sing Born in the USABruce Springsteen’s anthem, in the final stretch of the intermission of the Super Bowl. “For me it was very important that my daughter told all the girls in the world to raise her voice,” adds the singer excitedly. “This is not about politics, it is a human rights issue,” she says.

Throughout her 36-year career, the singer of Let’s Get Loud o Jenny from the Block He has had to fight against the image of being just a pretty face, starring in romantic movies and looking for a place in music. It is no coincidence that the bulk of the film is focused on these endless days with his closest team of coaches, choreographers, dozens of dancers who help him prepare the show that 100 million Americans would later enjoy. It shows a methodical, tireless, perfectionist Jennifer Lopez and behind each of the details of her showand who have raised her as the image of the new paradigm of feminine aesthetics, someone concerned about exercise and healthy food beyond 50.

But the one who was the daughter of a housewife, Guadalupe, and a Puerto Rican computer technician, David, who arrived in New York as newlyweds, has had to face continuous criticism for her physique, one of JLo’s main complaints on the tape. Since sketch in the cartoon series South Park to comments about her hips or her weight from presenters like David Letterman. “It’s hard to be taken as a joke, not taken seriously. I have thought about quitting many times”, he would confess in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter which is included in the documentary.

The other criticism that Jennifer Lopez has not wanted to let slip about her has been the interference of the press in her love life, another crucial aspect that has served so that she was not taken seriously as an artist. Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who is now her current partner, blamed media pressure for her breakup 17 years ago. “Once I asked her if she didn’t feel upset about what they said about her, and she replied that she expected that to happen, that normally they would be fair with him and not with her,” says the actor, who only appears once in the film. A justice that seems to have come to Lopez in the middle of the intermission of her career and her life.

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