Jennifer Lopez’s confessions in the documentary that Netflix has just released

Just four days ago Jennifer Lopez collected two awards at the gala of the MTV Movie & TV Awardsone for best song for “On My Way“, from the soundtrack of his latest film “Marry me”, and another for his entire career, and for which 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 an hour and a half that “Halftime” lasts, a documentary where the singer from the Bronx , in the first person, recounts his career with the preparations for the performance at the 2020 Super Bowl, where he performed alongside the Colombian singer Shakiraas background.

“I have spent my whole life wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen and taken seriously, and now I have this incredible opportunity to show the world who I am,” López hopes in the first minutes of the feature film about her show in the end of the NFL.

The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 8, arrived this Tuesday at Netflix. In it, an interview with López is interspersed, with home videos, photos and childhood memories and beginnings of the artist born in the Bronx, New York, with images shot between July 2019 and January 2021, when she performed “This Land is My Land” during the inauguration of Joe Biden Y 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”, confess. The avalanche referred to by the actress who in 1997 starred in her first film “Selena” was plagued in 2019 by red carpets, filming, concerts and rehearsals: the character of Ramona in “Hustlers”, available on Amazon Prime Video, would bring her a nomination for golden globes22 years after having received it for her interpretation of the Texan artist, who in the end did not win.

To that campaign and obstacle course that are the awards in Hollywood despite not getting an Oscar nomination, an issue that is also addressed in the documentary, rehearsals for the 14-minute show at the Super Bowl break are added. , in addition to the filming of “Marry Me”, which starred with Maluma. All after having blown out the candles of his 50th anniversary, an occasion in which he said before cameras: “I feel that my life has only just begun”.

The artist also known as JLo is not the first American singer and actress who dares to tell her life and her truth through a documentary. Lady Gaga already did it, in 2017 in “Gaga: Five Foot Two”, a title that refers to her height, and Taylor Swift in 2020 with “Miss Americana”. It is a formula that, in both cases, worked to discover aspects of the life of the artists that were unknown until then to the general public. If the protagonist of “A star is born” showed her struggle against the chronic physical pain that she suffers from her, and Swift confessed her eating disorders, here Lopez has wanted to vindicate her artistic career as a woman and as a Latina .

That 14-minute Super Bowl intermission show wasn’t just about “getting off your ass and belly dancing,” in the words of the performer. For the artist, participating in the event 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 families on the Mexican border.

Those cages, López would use them in the final act of his show: from there his daughter Emme appeared to later sing “Born in the USA”, Bruce Springsteen’s anthem, in the final stretch of the intermission of the NF finalL. “It was very important to me that my daughter told all the girls in the world to raise their voices,” adds the emotional singer. “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” or “Jenny from the Block” has had to fight against the image of being just a pretty face, star of romantic movies and looking for a place in the 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 millions of people would later enjoy.

There, a methodical, tireless, perfectionist Jennifer Lopez is shown behind each of the details of her show. It is the discipline that has raised her as the image of the new paradigm of feminine aesthetics, someone concerned about exercise and nutrition beyond 50.

However, this daughter of a housewife, Guadalupe, and a Puerto Rican computer technician, David, who arrived in New York as newlyweds, He has had to face continuous criticism for his physique. That is one of the main complaints of JLo in “Halftime”, from a “sketch” in the cartoon series South Park to comments about his hips or his weight by presenters like David Letterman.

”It’s hard for them to take you as a joke, not take you seriously. I have thought about quitting many times, ”he would confess in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that is included in the documentary. The other criticism that the singer has not wanted to let escape in this feature film has been the interference of the press in her love life, a crucial aspect that has served so that she was not taken seriously.

“Once I asked her if she didn’t feel annoyed by what they said about her, and she answered that she expected that to happen, that normally they would be fair with him and not with her”he assures in his only appearance in the film Ben Affleckhis current partner and with whom, at the beginning of the millennium, J.Lo had one of the most mediated relationships of all. Justice seems to have come to him halfway through his career.