The reviews are in

FUCK.

German-occupied Poland, summer of 1943. More than anything, Hedwig, an indefatigable mother of five, wants to keep her well-organised life as is. After all, she has worked her fingers to the bone to create a fragrant slice of paradise to raise her children, and nothing will change that. If only her husband, the distinguished SS officer and Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hoess, weren’t always burdened by his duties. But perfection is a fleeting illusion. As the oblivious life of the commandant’s wife unravels in cloudless bliss, Rudolf finds himself swamped with work, saddled with testing a new ventilation design and overseeing the installation of a highly effective Topf and Sons multi-muffle, non-stop incineration oven system. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that just a hair’s breadth away from the peaceful and idyllic Höss household, the unimaginable horrors of the Final Solution were unfolding in full swing. And as noisome fumes and muffled, blood-curdling noises blemish Hedwig’s verdant utopia, a question emerges. When evil becomes banal and apathy requires no effort, what separates man from beast?

That is the IMDB summary of the film The Zone of Interest. Obviously there’s been a lot of comparison with the Krasnov regime to the schöne Zeiten of Germany in the 1930s/40s, but I think Xan Brooks just drew the bleakest and nastiest one, and he only gets nastier after that:

This mood of cosy conviviality extends all the way through the opening credits; at which point the chill descends and the novocaine kicks in, as the film’s star and executive producer proceeds to guide us – with agonising glacial slowness – through the preparations for her husband’s second presidential inauguration. She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. “Candlelight and black tie and my creative vision,” she says, as though listing the ingredients in a cauldron. “As first lady, children will always remain my priority,” she coos, and you can almost picture her coaxing them into her little gingerbread house.
No doubt there is a great documentary to be made about Melania Knauss, the ambitious model from out of Slovenia who married a New York real-estate mogul and then found herself cast in the role of a latter-day Eva Braun, but the horrific Melania emphatically isn’t it. It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne.

And, a bit more locally, this critic saw it was eight other people. Yes, as many as that:

As I emerge from the cinema, I have the strange feeling that I have not only learned nothing but lost brain cells.
“What did you think?” I ask the elderly lady. “I loved it, wow!” she cries.
I pin down the only two people who didn’t see the movie alone. The couple tell me they’re a fan of Trump, and of Melania, but they found the experience too much like a “PR vehicle”.
“It’s not as insightful as I thought it would be,” one says.
“I’ve loved Melania for 15 years … and I feel like it was made to make Trump look better,” the other says.
“As much as it was for her, it was for him.”
Isn’t everything.

Still, at least it’s actually showing here, which is more than can be said for some countries:

Cinemas in South Africa will not be showing the documentary about US First Lady Melania Trump that is due to be released around the world on Friday.
The South African distributor Filmfinity has decided not to release it, its head of sales and marketing told the New York Times and South Africa-based website News24. The company was not explicit about the reasons behind the move.
The film, Melania, is not promoted on the websites of the country’s main cinema chains. One Cape Town independent cinema contacted by the BBC said that it was called by Filmfinity and told not to list it.
Relations between the US and South Africa have seriously deteriorated over the past year. […]
“Based on recent developments, we’ve taken the decision to not go ahead with a theatrical release in territory,” Filmfinity’s Thobashan Govindarajulu is quoted as saying by the New York Times.
He told News24 that the decision had been taken “given the current climate”.
The executive did not elaborate on what he meant by “recent developments” or “current climate”.

Trump’s insistence that there’s a “white genocide” happening in South Africa and Cyril Ramaphosa’s letting it happen has nothing to do with it, I’m sure. In its way, this is the best review of all, I suppose…

EDIT (late night Feb. 3rd): There’s been a correction to the Xan Brooks review:

Which answers the question I did have about why Brooks still gave the film one star instead of none if he thought it was that heinous, i.e. 0/5 was the intended rating. Bloody subeditors, eh…