Rufus and Helena Take a Library Break

Voiced by Rufus Wainwright, “Out of the Game,” the titular track from his upcoming Mark Ronson-produced album, gets the Helena Bonham Carter lip-sync treatment in the song’s new music video.

Bonham Carter, donning a particularly morose three-piece skirt suit and polyester blouse, plays a stuffy and bespectacled (albeit darling) librarian, pitted against three incorrigible library patrons (played by Wainwright), whose offenses include attempting to light up while perusing an upside-down copy of Zen and the Art of Car Mechanics and being slumped over a Xerox machine, dripping flask of bourbon in hand, clutching the cheekily named Valley of the Flaws. These three literary delinquents also serve as backup singers of sorts, and their depraved behavior is highlighted in bathroom interludes.

All our librarian wants, and indeed yearns for, is the arrival of the mattress she has ordered, and upon arrival, our prim maîtresse lets loose.

OUT OF THE GAME IS OUT MAY 1.

[Vulture]