The most recent HBO present from the creator of “Euphoria” is popping out to be as controversial as anticipated.
“The Idol,” the brand new Sam Levinson sequence starring Lily-Rose Depp and The Weeknd, premiered its first two episodes on the Cannes Movie Competition on Monday after dealing with backlash months earlier than it even debuted. In March, Rolling Stone reported that the present had been “suffering from delays, reshoots, and rewrites” after its director exited, and the reshoots allegedly turned the sequence right into a “rape fantasy” and “sexual torture porn.”
Primarily based on the primary opinions, it feels like that wasn’t far off. Depp performs a younger pop star within the sequence, whereas The Weeknd performs the chief of a cult. Based on Vulture, one of many early plots entails a selfie of Depp’s character with semen on her face leaking, which causes her to be described as a “human cum sock,” and viewers see this selfie on display screen. Depp’s “bare, and near-naked, breasts are on fixed show,” and there are intercourse scenes which might be graphic “even by HBO requirements,” the Los Angeles Instances reported. Vulture additionally mentioned one scene “looks like faint rape-fantasy porn.”
At The Playlist, critic Robert Daniels panned the present as “crude, gross, and sexist,” a “failed try at being transgressive” suffering from a “shockingly inert script” and “atrocious” intercourse scenes. The Weeknd “can be a horrible actor,” Daniels added. Selection’s Peter Debruge, in the meantime, mentioned the present “performs like a sordid male fantasy” and that Depp’s character is handled in a “shameful” manner, whereas The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Gyarkye mentioned it “makes you surprise if in attempting so onerous to be transgressive, the present in the end turns into regressive.” The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood also tweeted that the second episode is “sexist” and “pseudo-porn.”
Nonetheless, the premiere acquired a five-minute standing ovation at Cannes. In a press convention, Levinson defended the show by saying that “typically issues that is perhaps revolutionary are taken too far.” He additionally said that after his spouse learn him the Rolling Stone report, “I checked out her and I simply mentioned, ‘I believe we’re about to have the most important present of the summer time.'”