WHEN A GIRL WANTS A LITTLE BIT MORE
 
Surely the video for Jamelia "See it in a boy's eyes" is the best music video of this year so far.

This post admittedly might be a bit tedious for more up with it overseas viewers but Australians seem only to have been provided televisual access to this gem this past weekend. And it is frighteningly good. ISN'T IT!
 
We admittedly felt a bit ambivalent about Jamelia for a time. Although she brought proper British pop back to the upper slots of the Australian top 50 in a most pleasing fashion, the song she did it with ("Superstar") had its best bit in its first 8 seconds (the little guitar riffy motif at the beginning where she's strutting round the blue-stone street in the video), and "Thank You" was good, but had a boring video that looked like it had been made with a Windows Media Player "visualisations" thing.
 
However. It's always excellent when someone in the field of "pops" does something far better than they really needed to, and Jamelia has happily done just that. She could clearly have turned out any old dross for the video for her third single, but instead, she appears to have substantially remade the French film  Beau Travail. She really has!

The result is something more visually arresting than it would have been reasonable to anticipate, even if it's not quite clear precisely what's going on, narrative-wise. Just like in Beau Travail.  The similarities are endless. Both have:
 
* an army of stupidly attractive men, all grimly serious
* a setting that is a non-specific, hot country, possibly one which is "developing"
* choreographed exercise routines signifying balance, power, grace and such

* unresolved sexual tension conveyed through thrillingly wordless moments of eye contact

* inscrutable, urgently dramatic storylines bursting with repressed urges and biceps.
 
Finally, this is a video where images have been painstakingly matched to the subtleties of the song. Half a second of soldiers' feet running up stairs goes with a clicking sound at the start of the chorus; the unruly chanting in the middle 8 goes with soldiers singing in the showers (at least, by implication). This is the.best.video.ever. (apart, perhaps, from Emma Bunton "Maybe" which has also just made it to Australia nearly a year after other countries got it; presumably it was shipped here by "Surface Mail: Economy International".)