Prathyush Parasuraman
The whole point of The Idol is, presumably, sex. Not just sex, but provocative, sexy sex. The kind that hacks at your moral demands from cinema, the kind that turns a character’s inner lives tumbling; the kind that is so full of heat, it scorches any self of self — self-respect, self-image.
After a photo of her with cum on her face goes viral, she revs along for a night out, where she meets a shady club owner, Tedros (Abel Tesfaye). He is — as we will find out — also a cult leader who is trying to twist Jocelyn’s life to his fiscal advantage.
A face-off between Jennie and Depp’s characters, bringing together the fandoms of K-pop and American pop — it sounds like an algorithmic, clickbait dream.
Director Sam Levinson takes a hatchet to the adjective ‘sexy’ in The Idol, drowning it in exposed nipples and butt cracks, choking it till it loses its very meaning. The much-anticipated sex scenes are reduced to an exhaustive predictability pixelating into ennui.
All that cinematic trauma — a dead mother, a career on the verge of being short-circuited, passing references to a cheating boyfriend — Jocelyn is a character far beyond irony, beyond sympathy, beyond disgust, beyond concern, beyond emotional release, catharsis, whatever.