London is the stage and the Sweetener World Tour is the occasion. Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You, directed by Paul Dugdale and released in 2020, pairs a full-scale pop concert with glimpses of the singer's life in rehearsal and on the road.
What is Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You about?
Most of the running time belongs to the show itself. Ariana Grande performs her Sweetener World Tour set in front of a London crowd, and the cameras stay close enough to catch both the size of the production and the detail of the performance. Between songs the film steps away from the arena. It visits the rehearsal room, where the show is still being shaped, and it travels with the tour, showing the hours that surround a concert rather than the concert alone. The two strands answer each other: the polished evening on stage, and the preparation and travel that make that evening possible.
About the cast
Ariana Grande is the only name in the credited cast, and she appears as herself throughout, on stage and off it. There are no fictional roles here, since the film is a documentary record of a real tour. Behind the camera is director Paul Dugdale, who is responsible for how the London performance and the backstage material are woven into a single feature-length piece.
Context & significance
The concert film is one of the oldest forms of music documentary, and its appeal is simple: it offers a seat at a show that most people could never attend in person. Excuse Me, I Love You follows that tradition while adding the behind-the-scenes passages that modern audiences have come to expect, so the viewer sees the artist at work as well as the artist in the spotlight. It is an American production from 2020, classified under documentary and music, and it runs 97 minutes, roughly the length of a live set with room left over for the offstage moments. For listeners who know the Sweetener era of her catalogue, the film is a way to revisit those songs as they sounded in an arena. For anyone curious about what a large pop tour involves, the rehearsal and travel footage gives a sense of the routine behind the spectacle.
Watching Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You on Ktime
Ariana Grande: Excuse Me, I Love You can be played on K-Time once you sign in with a K-Time account; this page is open to read without one. The service is designed around Persian-speaking audiences abroad and offers a Farsi interface as well as English. At present no Persian dub or Persian subtitles are listed for this concert documentary.