Sam Levinson is known for pushing the boundaries with his graphic depictions of sex, nudity and drug use on the popular drama Euphoria, so it’s no surprise that his newest project — the upcoming HBO series The Idol — is already stirring up controversy due to its explicit content. The director took over the project when it was almost finished, scrapping most of it and shifting the script’s narrative into what crew members have called “torture porn.” The reviews are in, after the first two episodes were screened at Cannes Film Festival, so let’s see what they think after all the changes to the series and reported issues.
The Idol stars Lily-Rose Depp as aspiring pop star Jocelyn and Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd, who also co-created the series) as the sex cult leader she becomes involved with. Depp seemed to be having the best time with her colleagues at the premiere in France, and Deadline reports the show got a 5-minute standing ovation from the Cannes crowd, but what do the critics have to say?
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair says while the show seems to take itself pretty seriously — and is certainly going for a shock factor — the stakes don’t seem that high after the first two episodes, with some of the dialogue coming off as awkward and prosaic. The critic continues:
Levinson’s whole deal is not for everyone—and often not for me—but The Idol offers up enough regular old entertainment to balance out his aggressive flourish and the bluster of his thematic ambitions. Just don’t approach the first two episodes with any notion that you are about to see something startling and transgressive. Maybe that stuff is coming in later episodes, but thus far, The Idol is way too Top 40 to rattle the squares.
Damon Wise of Deadline isn’t sure exactly where the series is headed after the first two episodes — probably somewhere nasty — but Lily-Rose Depp is “riveting,” Wise writes:
Until we know more, it’s hard to make value judgments about morality and ethics, or, more substantively, the arguments about the male gaze and female body rights that are coming in the water like a stealth torpedo. However it turns out, Depp is quite rivetingly game with, to put it mildly, a highly sexualized performance that also is grounded and often vulnerable, discomfitingly addressing the fine lines between porn and art, power and exploitation that have faced young women in the music industry for years.
Douglas Greenwood of Vogue agrees that Lily-Rose Depp is excellent in a performance that requires a lot, physically and emotionally, and says the series will likely be polarizing in the same way as Euphoria. From the review:
Whether The Idol will go down in history as a misfire of high-budget misogyny or a telling depiction of the terrifying trappings of fame will likely depend on who you talk to. The same audiences that fell hard for Euphoria—another show about the terrors of being young—will likely do the same for this one. It is buzzy, brazen television that will do exactly what it set out to do: get people talking.
David Fear of Rolling Stone argues that The Idol is way worse than the buzz that has preceded it, as Sam Levinson mistakes toxicity for complexity and crude caricatures for sharp satire. He continues:
While it’s tempting to say that everything you’ve heard about it is true, that may be soft-selling how skin-crawling the experience of actually watching this satire (?) on the seven circles of showbiz hell is. The double-dose the festival screened felt nasty, brutish, much longer than it is, and way, way worse than you’d have anticipated.
Lovia Gyarkye of THR is not the only critic to say that there’s nothing erotic about Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd’s sex scenes, and the critic says The Idol is frustrating in that it shows glimpses of potential when it’s not trying so hard to be shocking. More from the review:
Levinson applies his efficient and stylish direction to every scene. Some of them have momentum, others are contradictory and most of them are confusing. It makes you wonder if in trying so hard to be transgressive, the show ultimately becomes regressive. Jocelyn asserts her agency in the first ten minutes, only to relinquish it at every conceivable moment. Rarely does a scene go by without the camera showing flashes of her breasts or ass. You start to wonder if this is building to anything, and by episode two it seems likely that it’s probably not.
Caspar Salmon of the Daily Beast says The Idol is straight-up “bad,” questioning why The Weeknd’s character is not objectified in the same way as Lily-Rose Depp’s. The critic accuses Sam Levinson’s series of giving a “self-excusing presentation of rape culture," continuing:
There would be no problem in playing with sexual ambiguity (and clearly this character is presented as being sleazy and domineering, seeking to exert power over Jocelyn not just in the bedroom). But taken together with the show’s misogyny and endlessly patriarchal outlook, it plays as a pretty wobbly endorsement of nefarious behavior. Being attracted to violence and to power-play as a sexual turn-on is not unusual, but there is a horrible blurring of lines here, which frames queasy sexual behavior as the highest of turn-ons.
It sounds like Sam Levinson delivers as promised on shock value with The Idol, but how much the rest of the series comes together — and how problematic viewers find it — remains to be seen. The show will premiere at 9 p.m. ET Sunday, June 4, and can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription (now just called Max).
