Photo: HBO
After weeks — months, years — of bad and troubled buzz (and anot-too-well-received screening at Cannes), HBO’s new seriesThe Idolhas finally premiered. The first, hour-long episode was kinky yet empty, like a visit to a red-light district during the pandemic.
There was one fundamental problem right off the bat, and the show’s subsequent episodes may never be able to right it.Lily-Rose Deppplays a world-famous pop star, Jocelyn, who’s trying to revive her career after suffering a nervous collapse. Depp has a striking face — hard, with high cheekbones, a full-lipped, scornful mouth and large, cold eyes — but she never seems damaged or vulnerable. She looks like she could put a cigarette out on Madonna’s hand without batting an eye.
No one, in fact, has bothered giving Jocelyn any psychology at all — she’s merely been loaded up with perverse impulses, no more meaningful than bags of groceries shoved into the trunk of an SUV. She bares her breasts during a photo shoot, arouses herself with asphyxiation and, in the show’s most disturbing moment, permits a stranger named Tedros (Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye, one of the show’s creators) to nearly smother her.
HBO
Apparently Tedros will be introducing Joss into some sort of cult. Maybe it’s like the one inEyes Wide Shut,where characterless women stand around naked in a ballroom, reduced to erotic mannequins and caterers.
In arecentNew York Timesinterview, however, the stars and co-creator/director Sam Levinson (Euphoria) hinted that these two will be engaging in a sinister power play, whichmay explain a brief clipof Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas inBasic Instinct.But setting up that sort of dynamic requires more than nodding to director Paul Verhoeven’s strange classic. You might as well have gone whole-hog and thrown in clips ofElle, Showgirlsand evenStarship Troopers.
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The Idolairs on HBO Sundays at 9 p.m.
source: people.com
