Britney Spears Unveils “Perfume” Video: Watch The Cinematic Clip

Britney Spears has unveiled the video for her latest single, “Perfume,” and it’s a marked improvement over that abysmal lyric video: Not only does she look great, but as promised, she busts out her most serious acting chops since Crossroads (yep, I said it) in the video, which sees Spears playing the role of the paranoid girlfriend whose insecurity drives her a little nuts. (Not that nuts — really, all she does is work her angles and spritz on perfume, but that’s more than enough.) Or is Spears the other woman, and that non-Britney brunette is the girlfriend? It’s hard to tell. She’s on some kind of Mulholland Drive journey here, that’s all.

The Joseph Kahn-directed clip might have had a few hiccups production-wise — the director sounded off on Twitter about how his preferred cut of the video didn’t make it past the people in charge, and in fairness, it does feel oddly anticlimactic, a whole lot of tension without any payoff — but nonetheless, it shows that while Britney Jean may have underperformed both critically and commercially, the queen of pop’s still got somethin’ special. All those glamorous shots of Spears are great, but it’s the surprisingly emotive performance that nicely matches her full-bodied vocal delivery on the song.

Watch it up top.

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