Alice Fassi brings a delightful comedic sensibility - both absurd and touching - to Joy Crooke’s latest, a song that dares to tackle a thorny subject: the effect of feminine beauty on other women.

The subject of the song and video is the beautiful, apparently vacuous Carmen - spied upon by an awestruck Joy, disguised as a bush. Carmen (played by Amelia Swaby) is literally heading for a fall. She’s even looking gorgeous in mid-plummet - but then comes her surprising, brilliantly delivered fate: the mannequin-like Carmen shatters into pieces.

The Italian director’s cartoonish approach is a real departure from previous Joy Crookes videos but entirely welcome, primarily as the wacky invention also shares the warmth of the song. She also makes the most of Joy as a performer in the second half of the video, when friendship blossoms with Swaby - by this point playing Carmen’s disembodied head in a box.

"When I listened to the track, I felt I knew this 'Carmen'," says Alice Fassi. "Carmen actually is the girl we’ve all known at some point: effortlessly perfect, admired to the point of obsession, and quietly envied for having everything we ever wanted – all without lifting a finger.

"Sometimes it takes almost nothing: a casual comparison, a sprinkle of envy dressed up as admiration, and suddenly we’re bowing down to someone who only exists in our head. Not the real person, of course, but a high-gloss, limited-edition fantasy — prettier, cooler, simply better. And from there, it’s a slippery slope straight into obsession.

"For our music video, the scene of Carmen falling down the stairs is the perfect embodiment of this feeling. Even in her most dramatic downfall, she manages to be… perfect. And though she shatters into a thousand pieces, her influence doesn’t – it simply shifts. In this case, it takes hold of Joy, the singer of the song.

"With this video, I wanted to explore that familiar feeling of never quite measuring up, of getting lost in the ridiculous race to become someone else entirely, until envy pushes us into surreal territory. My goal was to capture that intimate emotion with a sense of playfulness, wit, and irony, because beneath the absurdity lies something painfully real. It’s a cheeky dive into the beauty standards we’re fed daily, and the strange cult of superficial adoration."