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    Best Songs of 2023

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    Seventy-one tracks that asked big questions, found new kinship between genres and helped us see the good in Ken.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesFumbling Toward EcstasyThe album may be imperiled; people have been saying so for decades, even though the form has resisted extinction. Meanwhile, songs flourish, whether or not they’re destined for albums, and are ever more flexible. Some maintain the pop conventions of verse-chorus-verse; others distill themselves down to TikTok-ready hooks or sprawl across digital time frames. Here are 30 of my favorite songs from 2023 — less a ranking than a playlist, a tribute to creative abundance.1. Allison Russell, ‘Eve Was Black’The tune could be a toe-tapping Appalachian hoedown. But the title’s blunt, irrefutable statement carries Allison Russell toward harsh thoughts about racism, slavery, exploitation, lynching and sin — and then to an unexpected coda.2. Peter Gabriel, ‘Road to Joy (Bright-Side Mix)’Like many Peter Gabriel songs, this one has a scenario. The narrator is waking from a coma into an overload of sensory experiences, getting “back in the world”; the music is a funk carnival that keeps adding euphoric layers.3. 100 gecs, ‘Dumbest Girl Alive’No band walks Spinal Tap’s “fine line between clever and stupid” like the duo 100 gecs. “Dumbest Girl Alive” has a primal stomp for a beat, an up-and-down guitar riff that whimsically hops around instruments, and filtered hyperpop vocals with 21st-century lines like “put emojis on my grave” — just the thing for an utterly knowing, utterly meta bash.4. Sampha, ‘Suspended’Sampha’s “Lahai” was brighter and more expansive than his previous LPs.Ayesha Kazim for The New York TimesSampha gathers ideas from R&B, classical Minimalism, twitchy hyperpop and more around the androgynous melancholy of his voice. He conjures a rapturous infatuation and the need it leaves behind in “Suspended,” three minutes of vertigo from his album “Lahai.”5. The Rolling Stones featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder, ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’The peak of the Rolling Stones’ resurgent album “Hackney Diamonds” is an all-star concoction that sounds like a raw studio jam. Mick Jagger extols the glories of music and the song climbs to a big, gospelly finish, with Jagger and Lady Gaga goading each other to belt more. When it winds up, they catch their breath but they don’t want to quit — and the song builds even higher.6. Yahritza y Su Esencia and Grupo Frontera, ‘Frágil’Two Mexican American groups — from Washington state and Texas — unite for “Frágil,” a cumbia complaint about a heartless partner. While the men in Grupo Frontera sound mildly apologetic, Yahritza Martinez sings as if her heart might burst at any moment.7. Baby Rose, ‘Stop the Bleeding’With her low, tremulous, gripping voice, Baby Rose sings about love as self-sabotage, trying to break free while an orchestra underlines her despair.8. Shakira, ‘BZRP Music Sessions #53’In one of Shakira’s canny 2023 collaborations — others were with Karol G and the regional Mexican band Fuerza Regida — she enlisted the hitmaking Argentine electro producer Bizarrap to take revenge on her ex, with pointed wordplay and an airborne hook denouncing “guys like you.”9. Killer Mike featuring Future, André 3000 and Eryn Allen Kane, ‘Scientists & Engineers’In a track that roves from electro to guitar ballad to bursts of gospel, Killer Mike convenes fellow Atlanta rappers — the prolific Future and the elusive André 3000 — to address art, ambition, luxury, tenacity and paying dues, culminating in a marathon verse from Killer Mike himself.10. Brittany Howard, ‘What Now’Choppy, distorted, splintered hard funk pulses around Brittany Howard as she sorts through all the conflicting impulses of a breakup: taking blame and lashing out, feeling regret and relief, wanting to stay and knowing she needs to go.11. Jorja Smith, ‘Try Me’Jorja Smith used vocal nuance instead of volume to stir things up on her second studio album.Jose Sena Goulao/EPA, via ShutterstockA wounded, defensive Jorja Smith confronts someone who had put her down, in a track that evolves from pinging, percussive defiance to orchestral contemplation.12. Caroline Polachek, ‘Dang’One percussive syllable — “dang” — inspires an entire brittle production apparatus around Caroline Polachek’s deadpan voice. She sings about irreversible events, like shipwrecks and spilled milk, amid plinks, clangs, crashes, swooping strings and sampled screams, nonchalant amid the non sequiturs.13. aespa, ‘Better Things’Cowbells, handclaps and piano chords drive “Better Things,” a K-pop kiss-off with ingeniously cascading vocal harmonies and absolutely no regrets.14. Janelle Monáe featuring Doechii, ‘Phenomenal’Janelle Monáe’s 2023 album, “The Age of Pleasure,” exults in carnality while segueing through R&B, jazz and Caribbean styles. “Phenomenal” is a raunchy acclamation of lust and self-love, rapped and sung over springy, changeable Latin jazz grooves.15. Noname, ‘Namesake’Noname reels off brisk, matter-of-fact rhymes over a jazzy bass line as she strives to reconcile her personal comfort with all the world’s problems. She worries about complacency, complicity and hypocrisy; she doesn’t spare herself.16. Irreversible Entanglements, ‘Root Branch’Irreversible Entanglements is a fiercely riffing jazz band fronted by the low-voiced spoken-word poet Moor Mother. “We can be free — let’s fly,” she intones over the six-beat vamp of “Root Branch,” demanding something basic and essential.17. Jaimie Branch, ‘Take Over the World’The trumpeter and bandleader Jaimie Branch sets up a pummeling beat behind an environmental battle chant in “Take Over the World,” veers into a swirl of psychedelia, then whoops it up even harder.18. Dolly Parton, ‘World on Fire’Dolly Parton, of all people, delivers a full-fledged power ballad and stadium stomp to consider the dire state of the world. She counsels love, healing and kindness, but at the end she’s still wondering: “Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?”19. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” had a moment — during Pride celebrations and beyond — in 2023.Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesFor Kylie Minogue, “Padam Padam” is the sound of a heartbeat during a mutual flirtation at a club. The beat — a TikTok favorite — is a cheerful club thump, and a hint of Bollywood perks up the melody for three minutes of computerized bliss20. L’Rain, ‘I Killed Your Dog’L’Rain — the songwriter and performer Taja Cheek — ponders vengeful, destructive impulses in a near-lullaby that wanders through a chromatic chord progression, building ambivalence into the harmonies.21. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods sings about love as an accumulation of small connections and growing trust, a work in progress: “It’s not butterflies or fireworks.” The arc of the music, from isolated percussion and keyboards to multilayered, gospel-tinged vocals, radiates optimism.22. Olivia Dean featuring Leon Bridges, ‘The Hardest Part’With vintage soul chords and modern electronic subtleties, the English songwriter Olivia Dean and her American duet partner, Leon Bridges, sing about growing apart and moving on, grappling with second thoughts.23. Nkosazana Daughter, Master KG and Lowsheen featuring Murumba, ‘Ring Ring Ring’In an amapiano track full of echoey, lonely spaces, the South African singer Nkosazana Daughter and guests lament the uncertainty and sorrow of an unanswered phone call.24. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’Margo Price turned her lens outward to characters other than herself on her album “Strays.”Sara Messinger for The New York TimesIn this unblinking character study, a woman named Lydia, with “an ex-husband and a midlife crisis,” smokes a cigarette outside a clinic, thinking back through a life of hard luck and rough decisions and trying to decide whether to end her pregnancy. Margo Price sets the story to simple guitar chords and an understated string arrangement, pondering the choices.25. Mitski, ‘Bug Like an Angel’A squashed bug on the bottom of a cocktail glass leads Mitski to fragmentary epiphanies about addiction, trust and sex, with a choir bursting in to affirm each cryptic insight.26. Margaret Glaspy, ‘Memories’Over a waltz of simple guitar chords, Margaret Glaspy blurts out unvarnished grief in a torn voice, bereft yet struggling to go on.27. The Smile, ‘Bending Hectic’A guitar meditation melts into an ecstatic death wish during the eight minutes of “Bending Hectic.” Thom Yorke sings about driving along a curvy Italian mountain road with a sheer drop, and “letting go of the wheel”; Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangement envisions the plunge, and then electric guitars careen to a finish.28. Lankum, ‘Go Dig My Grave’The Irish band Lankum connects the fatalistic, death-haunted side of Celtic tradition to something like black metal in this nine-minute dirge about dying for love. It’s an inexorable crescendo from a solo a cappella vocal to a tolling, clanging drone topped by a howling fiddle, haunted and bleak.29. Caroline Rose, ‘Love/Lover/Friend’In a flurry of plucked and orchestral strings, Caroline Rose affirms her love by ruling out other possibilities, then basks in wordless choral ecstasy.30. André 3000, ‘That Night in Hawaii When I Turned Into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn’t Control … Sh¥t Was Wild’In a 10-minute instrumental for muffled drums, percussion and prowling parallel flute lines, André 3000 maintains an aura of calm vigilance, contemplative but still on edge.Jon CaramanicaAnything GoesIt was a year in which the best pop music truly made it up as it went along. Off-the-cuff collaborations? Sure. Songs by fictional characters? Why not. A guy filmed singing in a field by a West Virginia public radio outlet? Absolutely. Microscene classics that clock in at 75 seconds and might be forgotten tomorrow? Always. (In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I’ve only included songs that aren’t on albums that made my best of the year list.)1. Central Cee & Dave, ‘Sprinter’This British rap tag team is about improbable wealth, bounteous opportunities, living so fast that what’s slipping by is almost as good as what you manage to grab hold of. As celebrations go, this is a controlled, pensive one — a relaxed ramble for the moments when the money’s so new, it sparkles.2. Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), ‘World Class Sinner/I’m a Freak’A paean to emotional vacancy sung with emotional vacancy from a television show rife with emotional vacancy ends up … positively glistening. A cause for surrender.3. Oliver Anthony Music, ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’A great song, sure. More than that, though, a sense of great exasperation. The quick and strong embrace of this song suggests an ocean of frustration that pop music leaves largely untapped and unvoiced, and a grass-roots resistance that it has almost no hope of replicating.4. Mustafa, ‘Name of God’Few artists conjure a richness of sorrow the way the Canadian folk singer Mustafa does. Here, his singing is beautiful and a little distant, as if flinching ever so slightly from a pain that will never be anything but raw.5. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’PinkPantheress took her songs from her bedroom to bigger stages after a viral hit.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesA glimpse at how pop might — should? — sound in the coming few years. Two stars of the internet of 12 to 24 months ago who found themselves at the vanguards of their respective scenes come together for a collaboration in which neither has to concede an inch.6. Jelly Roll with Lainey Wilson, ‘Save Me’What makes Jelly Roll so effective is the way the intensity of his howl only amplifies the potency of his scars. It’s perhaps most pointed on this duet with Lainey Wilson, whose crisp and clear tone initially seems like an antidote, but is quickly revealed as equally bruised.7. That Mexican OT featuring Paul Wall and Drodi, ‘Johnny Dang’An effortless blend of Texas rap generations, fusing the tongue-twisting with the slow-rolling.8. Cody Johnson, ‘The Painter’When someone is effusive, it might not mean as much when they gush. But when a stoic drops his guard, it can feel seismic.9. Ken (Ryan Gosling), ‘I’m Just Ken’When this stridently sad song from the “Barbie” movie hits its apogee, it’s channeling Dashboard Confessional, Meat Loaf, the Phantom (of the Opera) and maybe even Scott Stapp. Slash plays guitar, salting the melodrama hard.10. Gunna, ‘Fukumean’The Atlanta rapper Gunna quickly returned to work after accepting a plea deal in a wide-sweeping ongoing case.Craig Barritt/Getty Images For GunnaA year ago, Gunna accepted a plea deal that untethered him from the RICO trial that has ensnared his mentor, Young Thug. Relatively quickly, he returned to his familiar slippery garble with a hit so ubiquitous it felt like a memory of how things once were.11. YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Dirty Thug’The best of another slew of lonely anthems from the most important and least publicly visible hip-hop star of the past few years.12. Kylie Minogue, ‘Padam Padam’A cool blast of not-quite-exuberance, this club-pop anthem is a continuation of Kylie Minogue’s sometime-diva legacy, a relentless queer anthem, a cheeky flirtation and a thump that just won’t quit.13. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’It has been 11 and a half years since Kitty Pryde released “Okay Cupid,” plenty of time for a re-embrace.14. Chino Pacas, ‘El Gordo Trae el Mando’A meaty, beatifically meandering boast by one of the rising stars of corridos tumbados.15. Lil Uzi Vert, ‘Just Wanna Rock’Grandfathered in from late 2022, this song broke TikTok, broke dancing, broke the Grammys and maybe even broke hip-hop.And 10 More:Corpse, “Disdain”Miley Cyrus, “Used to be Young”Emilia, “GTA.mp3”evvls, “Belikeme?”Jack Harlow, “Lovin on Me”Sam Hunt, “Walmart”Byron Messia, “Talibans”Militarie Gun, “Very High”Nettspend, “Shine N Peace”Odetari, “Good Loyal Thots”Lindsay ZoladzBeautiful DisastersSo many of my favorite tracks of the year flipped scripts, turned tables and reimagined weaknesses as strengths. By no means a complete list of the songs I enjoyed the past 12 months, these are 20 I couldn’t stop listening to — most of them reminders of music’s ability to turn mess into meaning, anxiety into energy and heartache into a great song.1. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Vampire’Olivia Rodrigo confronts a new class of villain on “Vampire,” the incisive first single that heralded her second album, “Guts,” but she also proves she has learned new ways to slay. “Vampire” is wrenching and formally restless, at first masquerading as a piano ballad, only to ramp up into a miniature rock opera complete with a showstopping high note worthy of a tragic heroine. But don’t cry for Rodrigo — she doesn’t need protection. Her words, her observations and her stylistic flair all have plenty of bite.2. PinkPantheress featuring Ice Spice, ‘Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2’In a previous millennium, two of pop’s main young girlies joined forces to each assert that “The Boy Is Mine,” but PinkPantheress (b. 2001) and Ice Spice (b. 2000) were not alive when that song was released. On their bubbly and utterly infectious collaboration, they sidestep any hint of rivalry and turn against the guy, deciding he’s not worth the drama. “What’s the point of crying?” they shrug blithely. “It was never even love.”3. Lana Del Rey, ‘A&W’The year’s best song about telling an ex-boyfriend’s mom that her son is a disaster (runner-up: Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!”), the sprawling, portentous seven-minute “A&W” is an unfiltered look into Lana Del Rey’s stream of consciousness: misremembered movie titles, sexually frank admissions, inside jokes about Californian geography (“I say I live in Rosemead, really, I’m at the Ramada”) and all manner of other oddly juxtaposed American flotsam. “Maybe,” she reasons with a weary sigh, arriving at some self-knowledge, “I’m just kinda like this.”4. boygenius, ‘Not Strong Enough’Everyone’s favorite musical besties — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus — riff on pop clichés and gender roles in this highlight from their breakout year, succinctly summing up their individual songwriting personalities and demonstrating the magic that happens when they combine their powers.5. Romy, ‘Enjoy Your Life’Romy Madley Croft was the final member of the xx to release a solo album.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThe xx’s Romy Madley Croft finds a solution for anxiety and self-doubt on this thumping, compassionate club banger: What if she looked at her life through the eyes of a benevolent mother? A luminous sample from the synth pioneer Beverly Glenn-Copeland — “my mother says to me, enjoy your life” — guides the way.6. Mitski, ‘My Love Mine All Mine’TikTok’s reluctant darling Mitski has released her share of songs that sound destined for pop crossover — last year’s sleek, synthy “Laurel Hell” was full of them — but, unexpectedly, she became a fixture on this year’s Hot 100 for the first time ever with this slow, moony ballad that sounds unlike anything else on the charts. Oblique, poetic and sumptuously sung, it’s a welcome moment of Zen.7. Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, ‘I Remember Everything’An old-fashioned he-said/she-said country duet cut through with a chill of bleak finality. Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves are both at their emotive best on this bruised-hearted crossover hit.8. Doja Cat, ‘Agora Hills’An arsenic-laced confection that shows off Doja Cat’s multiple personalities — a romantic and an ironist, an angel and a devil, a singer fluent in dreamy hooks and a rapper with razor-sharp teeth.9. Jess Williamson, ‘Hunter’The indie singer-songwriter Jess Williamson chronicles both the promise and fatigue of looking for love in this bittersweet, poetically rendered reflection, her twangy voice brimming with a weary hope.10. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Bad Idea, Right?’Olivia Rodrigo sings about mistakes in serious and humorous ways on her second album, “Guts.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWith the possession of a driver’s license comes the ability to drive to an ex’s house in the middle of the night for an ill-advised hookup. That’s the trade-off. At least such circumstances gave us one of Rodrigo’s spunkiest, funniest and most irresistible singles yet.11. Palehound, ‘Independence Day’El Kempner has a keen eye for tragicomic detail on this ramshackle rocker about regret, denial and long-simmering incompatibility that results in a July 4 breakup. “I’m living life like writing my first draft,” they sing. Aren’t we all.12. Water From Your Eyes, ‘Barley’All year I have been describing this zany, looping song from the Brooklyn art-rockers Water From Your Eyes as “what it would sound like if Sonic Youth had made an appearance on ‘Sesame Street,’” and I’m not going to stop now.13. Noname, ‘Namesake’The Chicago rapper Noname says the quiet part loud — and oh so dexterously — on this refreshingly honest track, an incisive examination of pop-cultural ethics unafraid to name names, including (in addition to Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar) her own.14. Wednesday, ‘Chosen to Deserve’In her cracked wail, the Southern rock band Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman — “the girl that you’ve chosen to deserve” — paints an achingly vivid portrait of suburban boredom and young adult malaise, finding just the right surface details to express something deep: “I was out late, sneaking into the neighborhood pool,” she sings. “Then I woke up early and taught at the Sunday school.”15. Mandy, Indiana, ‘Pinking Shears’Comment dit-on “hypnotic, endlessly loopable industrial banger”?16. Jenn Champion, ‘Jessica’There’s no right or wrong way to grieve, Jenn Champion reminds us on this icy, arresting piano ballad, as she rages against a friend’s overdose in lacerating detail.17. Jamila Woods featuring duendita, ‘Tiny Garden’Jamila Woods’s album “Water Made Us” achieves the musician’s greatest synthesis yet between her voices as a poet and as a songwriter.Bennett Raglin/Getty Images For Slow FactoryA warm, wise ode to incremental progress and tiny, beautiful things from R&B’s resident poet laureate.18. Yo La Tengo, ‘Fallout’Still knitting aural autumn sweaters, after all these years.19. Sufjan Stevens, ‘So You Are Tired’What state is he on now? Alaska? Disrepair? Grace? Regardless, this song is a quiet doozy that watches a long-term love unravel in slow motion like a spool of ribbon underwater.20. Drake featuring Sexyy Red and SZA, ‘Rich Baby Daddy’Exhibit Z that Drake is at his best not when he tsk-tsks grown women, but when he risks being outshone by inviting them on the track. More

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      in Movies

      From ‘The Idol’ to ‘Oppenheimer,’ a Nudity Summer Report Card

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      From “The Idol” to “Oppenheimer,” women’s bodies were on display on our screens the past few months. Some executions succeeded with humor, others felt misguided.This has been a summer of women being liberated — from their wardrobes, mostly. The nudity on our screens has been a topic of constant conversation for months, from the provoking premiere of “The Idol” in June to the left-field nudity in “Oppenheimer” (and the interpersonal havoc it wreaked on some relationships, as one viral TikTok can attest to). In each instance the theme, in one respect or another, seems to be liberation: not necessarily of the de Beauvoir variety, but a female character’s liberation from some kind of enclosure, whether societal, cultural or personal, and her nudity is meant to reflect that.Depending on the context of the story, the director’s intention, the work’s perspective or the execution of the shot, a nude scene may serve as shorthand for a character’s newfound physical or spiritual freedom, or even an emotional or psychological breakthrough. Or it may be another case of entertainment using a woman’s body for shock value. What follows is a spoiler-filled survey of the most gratuitous, unforgettable scenes of nudity this summer — and an analysis of which ones succeeded in showcasing the female form with reason and intention, as more than just eye candy.Constant nudity means an unsatisfying night of television.The setup: On “The Idol,” a young pop star named Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), feeling artistically frustrated and in the midst of a nervous breakdown, thrives under the tutelage of a mysterious club owner named Tedros (Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd) who is fostering a cult of skilled wannabe stars.The scene: It’s tough to pick just one nude scene in this disaster of a television show because Jocelyn is perennially stuck in a state of partial undress. In the first few minutes of the first episode we see Jocelyn in an open silky red robe at a photo shoot, arguing with the intimacy coordinator about her choice to do the shoot with her breasts visible.By belittling the job of the intimacy coordinator, the scene appears to be less about building Jocelyn as a character than it is about the series planting a flag in the bedraggled land of lurid television. Jocelyn’s insistence on doing the shoot without covering up is meant to illustrate that she’s a liberated woman, fully in charge of her sexuality, her body, her image. But “The Idol” never figures out what it thinks of its own characters, nor what they want or what to do with them.One of the prevailing questions about the show among viewers was: Are we meant to think Jocelyn is actually talented? It’s unclear whether the show considers its protagonist a true artist or an inept yet deluded peddler of mass-market schlock. Similarly, we don’t know how much control Jocelyn actually has. Her submissiveness to Tedros seems to indicate that she’s being manipulated. So Jocelyn’s daily wardrobe choices — which don’t ever seem to include baggy house clothes for bloated days or cotton pajamas for comfy lounging — seem to be less about her own self-image and freedom than they are about her being trapped in a 24/7 prison of objectification by her public and those around her.But the show makes a messy concluding three-point-turn near the end, proposing that perhaps Jocelyn was the evil mastermind after all. Just like the show can’t have both its earnest, docile starlet and cunning undercover operator, it can’t have a celebrity with both total agency and an obsession with appeasing everyone in their ideas of what she should look like and what she represents as an artist. Either way, with the show’s cancellation, it seems Jocelyn’s career is forever dead, with no Tedros to revive it.Andrew Barth Feldman as Percy and Jennifer Lawrence as Maddie in “No Hard Feelings.”Macall Polay/Columbia Pictures – Sony PicturesFisticuffs in the buff make sexuality besides the point.The setup: In “No Hard Feelings,” Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a crude and awkward 30-something with commitment issues who’s strapped for cash, responds to an ad from a rich couple seeking a woman to date and deflower their unknowing 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman). Maddie’s attempts at seducing the neurotic and insecure teenager are repeatedly thwarted in the most ridiculous ways, but in the process Maddie and Percy build a real connection.The scene: One night, as Maddie and a reluctant Percy go skinny-dipping at the beach, some bullies try to steal their stuff. Maddie steps out of the water in a full-frontal reveal, which then leads to a very NSFW fight sequence.Here “No Hard Feelings” takes a classic romance trope — the sexy, impromptu post-date dip — and wrings out all of the seduction, instead opting for absurd physical comedy. The scene, which includes an impressive crotch punch, succeeds for Lawrence’s dedication to this juvenile (and creepy) entry into the “raunchy sex comedy” category of forgettable B-movies.The camerawork is respectful, matter-of-fact, with no hint of a lingering eye. Lawrence’s body is not the point of the scene, but the vehicle of the comedy. Her sexuality is incidental; she pummels the beach interlopers so thoroughly that the violence purposely undermines her attempt to appear desirous to Percy.Cynthia Nixon, left, and Sara Ramirez in Season 2 of “And Just Like That…”Craig Blankenhorn/MaxMiranda deserves better.The setup: In the second season of this “Sex and the City” sequel, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) struggles to maintain her frayed relationships with her family while figuring out how she defines her sexual identity.The scene: Despite the show’s revolutionary, daring precursor, “And Just Like That…” can’t seem to figure out how to write its characters into a new world of sex, relationships and dating. AJLT also takes a more demure approach to its depictions of sex — which makes Miranda’s two full-frontal nude scenes in Episode 1 especially surprising.A beloved character that many SATC fans read to be coded gay — as did Nixon herself, who has been outspoken about her own coming out journey — Miranda discovers a new dimension to her sexuality once she meets Che (Sara Ramirez), a queer nonbinary comedian. In the first nude scene, part of a season-opening sex montage, Miranda is the only one of the cast members who is exposed, shown nude from the belly up in a pool with Che. At first the montage seems to place the queer romance on equal terms with the cis heterosexual ones, but the moment of nudity does seem as though “And Just Like That…” is calling special, almost self-congratulatory, attention to Miranda and Che.But Miranda struggles to adjust to a new relationship, a new sexuality and a new lifestyle, exemplified by the second scene, where Miranda tries Che’s sensory deprivation tank. Unable to relax, Miranda panics and stumbles her way out of the tank, floundering in the nude. It’s a depiction of the fish-out-of-water metaphor that extends to another scene in the episode that shows her in the bedroom with Che struggling to use a sex toy. Here Miranda serves as a comic aside.Miranda’s arc has been the least forgiving in the series, given how her journey of self-discovery comes at the cost of her relationships and, in these nude scenes and others, her dignity. Miranda’s nascent sexual liberation is graphically defined by gaffes and naïveté. For a show that aims to represent women — and, particularly, middle-aged women, with more diverse bodies and backgrounds and sexual orientations than “SATC” included in its series — “And Just Like That…” unfortunately uses an older woman’s body as a punchline.Stephanie Hsu as Kat, from left, Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Ashley Park as Audrey, and Sherry Cola as Lolo in a scene from the film “Joy Ride.”Ed Araquel/Lionsgate, via Associated PressA well-placed tattoo can create comedy gold.The setup: In “Joy Ride” Audrey (Ashley Park), an Asian American lawyer raised by white parents, travels to China for a business trip that, thanks to her friends Lolo (Sherry Cola), Kat (Stephanie Hsu) and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), transforms into a crazy vacation full of sex, drugs and misadventures. In one such outing Audrey finds herself in the middle of a threesome with two handsome basketball players. In another, a wardrobe malfunction reveals Kat’s secret genital tattoo.The scene: The movie’s charm lies largely in its dedication to its tried-but-true girlfriends-gone-wild genre of comedy. So even the formulaic setups and telegraphed emotional resolution are entertaining given how much free rein the characters — and the actors playing them — are offered to showcase the film’s absurdity. One of the reoccurring themes in the movie is the importance of being true to yourself, and the nude scenes fall perfectly in line with this idea.Audrey’s emotional journey hinges on her unwillingness to find her birth mother and connect with her culture. Her friends mock her for her uptightness and for her unchecked internalized racism — the knee-jerk trust she shows for a blond white woman over someone who looks like her, her obliviousness to her culture’s food and traditions, her infamously poor track record for dating Asian men. So when she sleeps with two attractive Asian athletes, it’s her liberating moment, when she can let loose sexually and feel open to embracing — literally and figuratively — Asianness.Likewise, Kat’s nude moment — revealing the giant demon head encompassing her full vulva — is the punchline to a classic, tidy setup that traces back to the early scenes of the movie, when Audrey lets slip to Lolo that Kat has a genital tattoo. Lolo’s vulgar line of questioning and theories about Kat’s private art, paired with the reveal that Kat pretends to be a chaste virgin in her relationship with her very Christian fiancé, build up the comedic tension. When her embellished nethers make an appearance, it’s a surprise, but not a sexy one. The garish detail of the demon face — and the pivot to an “internal” view, the camera showing the other three friends peeking into her vagina — rockets the movie’s comedy up to absurd heights without seeming unnecessarily sexualized or exploitative.Florence Pugh is Jean Tatlock and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in the film “Oppenheimer.”Universal PicturesOne man gets to be brilliant, while a brilliant woman gets to be naked.The setup: In “Oppenheimer,” the eponymous father of the atomic bomb (Cillian Murphy) is seen through the lens of his research, shifting politics and personal affairs — including a romance with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) — from his school days to his role as scientific director of the Manhattan Project to his public discrediting in the wake of a 1954 security hearing.The scene: For all of the ways “Oppenheimer” succeeds as a film, from its cinematography and performances to its storytelling, it also commits a cardinal cinematic sin: not just underusing a great actress like Florence Pugh, but also blatantly objectifying her character in gratuitous nude scenes.In Pugh’s first scene, Jean and Oppenheimer meet and banter, as if to show that she’s a worthy intellectual adversary, and therefore a worthy lover for the man-genius. After a meager couple of lines of dialogue Jean is naked, straddling Oppenheimer while instructing him to translate a copy of the “Bhagavad Gita” in his room. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” he translates, immediately transforming the scene into a misogynistic trope so often used in stories about male genius. Jean is not a brilliant thinker with daring politics; she’s not a character with her own story and agency. She is reduced to a body and a brilliant man’s inspiration.In Pugh’s second nude scene, when Tatlock persuades Oppenheimer to take a short leave of the Manhattan Project to spend the night with her in a hotel, she’s the stand-in for temptation. Her passion for him, and his ultimate refusal to continue their affair, helps the film craft an image of a man who is desired not just for his brain, but also his body.But the most unforgivable is Jean’s final nude appearance, imagined by Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), during Oppenheimer’s hearing. The only new information the scene is meant to convey is Kitty’s reaction to the council’s line of questioning about Oppenheimer’s affair with Jean. But Blunt’s acting — the hardness in her eyes, the clear expression of disdain and embarrassment — tells us all we need to know about her emotional response. Here the film yet again erases Jean’s personhood; she exists almost purely within the imagination of Oppenheimer and that of his wife, who like Jean, is similarly underwritten. She’s an underdressed footnote in a story about a smart guy she slept with a few times. What woman would envy that? More

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      ‘The Idol’ Is Ending Sunday. Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing.

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      Three Times critics agree: The HBO pop fable is bad television. Ahead of Sunday night’s season finale, they break down its baffling missteps and occasional bright spots.Created by Sam Levinson, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) and Reza Fahim, “The Idol” arrived five weeks ago amid mostly negative buzz and ends Sunday on HBO. (A second season has not been announced.) Ahead of the season finale, three New York Times critics — James Poniewozik, chief TV critic; Wesley Morris, critic at large; and Lindsay Zoladz, pop music critic — compared notes on the story of the unstable pop star Jocelyn (Lily-Rose Depp), the grimy Svengali Tedros (Tesfaye) and their various handlers and hangers-on.JAMES PONIEWOZIK A confession: I was ready for “The Idol” to be good. Yeah, I saw the reports about the catastrophic production. But there’s a history of HBO series that followed big hits and were trashed because they were trying different, ambitious things. (I will defend “Tell Me You Love Me” and “John From Cincinnati” until death.)But indeed “The Idol” is bad. Impressively so! In this era of smoothed-out TV mediocrity, you need pull to make a show this bad. You need big names who have, to quote Tedros, “cart-ay blan-shay.” “The Idol” is gross and leering in the way the set reports suggested, but it’s also inept in a way that Sam Levinson’s “Euphoria” would not suggest. The tone lurches erratically. Motivations are inexplicable. It features the least mesmerizing cult leader in screen history. Characters and story lines seem to exist only to express the makers’ gripes about the music industry or intimacy coordinators, like a porny, torture-y “The Newsroom.”I am open to arguments to the contrary, though! Or, at least, is “The Idol” saying anything about celebrity or pop music that’s worth a closer listen?WESLEY MORRIS I’m with you, Jim. Through four episodes, it’s a baffler. I think it suffers from that pull you identified. This is a 90-minute movie that doesn’t have the bonkers ideas, imagery or attitude to justify the five-plus hours it asks us to pay.But you know, that first episode seemed like it was really up to and onto something. As TV, it ran tight and focused while being busy and, in its lewd way, suspenseful. It was funny, strange, knowingly acted and — as ensemble comedy and because of that erotic choreography — enticingly physical. We’re taken inside the hothouse of American celebrity to watch as it wilts beneath the California sun. We meet an army of competing personalities and competing interests, all trying to figure out what then seemed to be a question of murder-mystery proportions: How did that image of Jocelyn’s semen-stained face get all over the internet? And who is its owner? Turns out, the leak is a white herring.An important joke is that the horror filmmaker Eli Roth is here, jittering in a small, pretty decent part. That’s because everything after the first episode, which ends with Tedros Tedros (yes, “Lolita” lovers) turning Jocelyn into a Magritte painting (tying her head up in a scarlet scarf) and then telling her to sing, is indeed a soulless trip to Ye Olde Torture-Porn Dungeon, albeit a bank-bustingly chic one.LINDSAY ZOLADZ Hello, fellow world-class sinners. Jim, I agree that there is something rare about a show this chaotically messy in our age of middle-of-the-road prestige, but I’m not sure that it’s compellingly bad enough that I would recommend it to anyone for rubbernecking purposes. Life’s too short. As attempted commentary about pop stardom, I find the show to be repellently smug — it really thinks it has something profound to say about celebrity and even (help us) female empowerment, but its big ideas all ring disappointingly hollow.And dramaturgically speaking — to quote Jeremy Strong, an actor I’d rather be watching on Sunday nights — “The Idol” is curiously inert. The story is muddled, the pacing is all over the place, the writing and performances can’t get me to care about the fates of any of the major characters. The best thing about the show by far is its stellar supporting cast: Rachel Sennott is hilarious as Leia, a kind of skittishly basic, Gen-Z Marnie Michaels who finds herself plopped down uncomfortably in the middle of this den of sin. But my favorite member of the entourage is Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who brings a knowingness and a killer sense of comic timing to the role of Destiny, one of Jocelyn’s managers. Cast her in everything, please.The flip-side of the supporting actors’ strengths, though, is also one of the show’s main weaknesses: “The Idol” is at its worst when its main characters are onscreen. Which, of course, is most of the time.Da’Vine Joy Randolph has brought excellent comic timing to the part of Destiny, one of Jocelyn’s managers.Eddy Chen/HBOThe question I keep asking myself: Why is the Weeknd doing this? (Excuse me: Why is Abel Tesfaye doing this?) Over the past decade, the Toronto-born crooner has ascended to a level of pop stardom more stratospheric than even the fictional Jocelyn’s; “Blinding Lights,” his glisteningly paranoid 2019 single, is now the longest charting song by a solo artist ever on the Billboard Hot 100 as well as the most-streamed song in Spotify history. That makes him successful in a way that even a misguided passion project like “The Idol” is unlikely to put too large a dent in, though I can’t help but wonder if this tarnishes his reputation just a bit moving forward. Jim, as someone less familiar with the Weeknd’s music, what impression is Tesfaye’s performance here making on you?PONIEWOZIK To my eye (and ear), Tesfaye is reading the role rather than acting it. His performance is flat, except when he overcorrects into outbursts. It’s the actorly equivalent of wearing sunglasses indoors; it doesn’t look cool, it just keeps us from seeing your eyes. And his “I meant to do that” defenses in his interviews don’t help matters. Why is he doing this? Search me, but maybe the answer is in the credits: Maybe he feels that there is an “Abel Tesfaye” side to his talent that “the Weeknd” persona does not sufficiently express. But if he’s willing to stretch in a new direction, he’s not yet Abel.In general, to bring up another bad HBO memory, “The Idol” has what I think of as the “Entourage” problem. For most of that show’s run, I could never quite tell if I was meant to think Vinny Chase was talented or just a pretty face who believed his own P.R. That issue is everywhere here. Is Jocelyn’s single … good? Is the remix? Is Tedros smart? Musically savvy? Charismatic? Good at sex? I don’t know, and if “The Idol” does, it also seems willing to reverse things on a dime to make the story go where it needs to, as when Jocelyn swerves within the space of an episode from being totally in Tedros’s thrall to calling him out and calling the shots. I would love to know what either of you think we’re supposed to think about Jocelyn.MORRIS Let’s talk about it! First of all, that song … It’s what plays while you make returns at Uniqlo. There’s not much that Mike Dean, the producer who makes an embarrassingly gonzo appearance in Episode 4, could do to make it more interesting. It’s a banger that doesn’t bang.My favorite farcical detail in this show is that a major pop star exists whose stage name is Jocelyn. “Jocelyn” is how you can tell nobody knew how to stop this thing before it was too late. This isn’t something I’d be thinking much about with a show that worked (I love all the Jocelyns in my life!), if that show’s lead actor could do more than leak a river from one eye at a time. But Lily-Rose Depp is a single-tear sort of performer. And yet! She does appear to be acting something like pain and insecurity. Somehow, she’s convincing me that Jocelyn is more than Sam Levinson’s idea of pop star. Depp is better at line readings than the Weeknd. She knows how to hold a closeup.The producer Mike Dean, right, who has worked with the Weeknd in the past, appeared as himself in the penultimate episode.Eddy Chen/HBOBut the part itself is madness: a clash of motivations, lusts, self-doubt and ambitions. It’s cri-de-coeur Britney mixed with Elvis under Col. Tom Parker’s thumb. But the prevailing influence, to my eye anyway, is Depp’s own mother, the singer, actor and Frenchwoman Vanessa Paradis. Jocelyn’s skinny, mile-long cigarettes seem more like a tribute to that kind of European insouciance than to anything conventionally American.Anyway, Jocelyn has been written as a mess, this victim (her abusers include her recently deceased mom and the maw of showbiz) whose post-traumatic stress has led her, we’re asked to believe, to a Svengali’s cult whose M.O. is basically “let Tedros Tedros make you suffer for your art.” But is she any kind of artist? The most irritating part of the show is maybe its point: Much stronger, more original talent surrounds Jocelyn, but her white blondness overtakes any determination to coax it.The show is chronically offering much better stuff than Jocelyn’s potential hit “World Class Sinner.” In the first episode it is prolonged exposure to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”; in Episode 4 it’s the singing and songwriting of another of Tedros’s captives, a strawberry shortcake named Chloe (Suzanna Son) — in the show’s only feat of poignant emotional connection, she learns from Destiny how to use her tongue to produce stronger (perhaps Blacker) singing. But Destiny is supposed to be Jocelyn’s manager! Has she ever advised her client to do that?Lindsay, I like Destiny, too. Sometimes. But she spends a week watching an adult man do terrible stuff to all kinds of people, including her client, and says nothing of consequence. This isn’t management. It’s babysitting.ZOLADZ Jim, I am constantly coming back to the questions you asked: Are we supposed to think Jocelyn’s music is any good? And, more vexingly, are we supposed to think the music she’s making with Tedros is better than the music the label wants her to record? (Remember a few years ago when we were all arguing over whether or not the pop songs in “A Star Is Born” were supposed to be bad? “The Idol” has me desperately missing Ally and her alternate-universe banger “Hair Body Face.” Jocelyn could never.)I do think we’re supposed to find “World Class Sinner” to be cloying and superficial, but the music she’s making with Tedros is bad, too. Some of this is Depp’s performance: She’s a watchable screen presence, but she’s a weak vocalist, and it’s often hard to tell if the vacancy she projects when she’s singing these songs is written into the character or merely a limitation of her performance. Whether intentional or not, she’s certainly playing Jocelyn like a cipher, which can make for confusing and frustrating viewing.Is Jocelyn supposed to be good? Depp in “The Idol.”Eddy Chen/HBOWhat most gets on my nerves about the show’s philosophy about pop music, though, is that on some level it does feel like a self-aggrandizing commercial for the Weeknd. When Tedros wants to impress Jocelyn with his industry connections, he books a session with — cue the impressed gasps from basically everyone in Joc’s entourage — Mike Dean, a producer with whom the Weeknd often works.I mean, the show takes place in Tesfaye’s own Beverly Hills mansion and features innumerable characters telling Joc how dope her house is. Tesfaye has taken great pains to point out that Tedros is not a self-portrait, and of course it’s not: For one thing, Tedros isn’t a musician. But no amount of gauche rattail wigs and zipped-up wind-breakers can make this show the artistic risk or the expression of vulnerability that Tesfaye seems to think it is. The Weeknd’s songs tint the show’s atmosphere — Episode 4 centered, right on the nose, on his too-languid cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” — ultimately perfuming the show with an ever-present whiff of self-satisfaction.PONIEWOZIK So what is this show trying to say, from behind its red-fabric gag? It seems to buy big into the idea that authenticity in art comes from suffering. And it’s full of provocations about how carnality is the soul of music. These two concepts come together in the show’s S&M fixation: Rough sex, in its vision (or at least Tedros’s), is the hairbrush for the frozen sea within us. On top of that, there’s a lot of something-something about how the corporate music money machine wants to repress the artist’s wildest urges.It’s hard to see these themes play out in “The Idol” without thinking of the criticisms of how Levinson sexualizes his young female characters in “Euphoria.” Most of the first episode is about Jocelyn’s handlers trying to rein in her sexuality and using the language of “wellness” and “slut-shaming” and “revenge porn” as P.R. tools. It all feels like a straw-diva rebuttal: “You call it exploitation, but look, this fictional woman I created wants to show her nipples on camera! Woke capitalism won’t let her express herself!”Suffering for their art: clockwise, from top left, Mitch Modes, Tesfaye, Suzanna Son, Rachel Sennott, Moses Sumney and Troye Sivan.Eddy Chen/HBOThe stressed-out suits, however, are easily the best part of the show. Half of it is a caustic, “Veep”-style industry satire about the star-maker machinery, with strong work from Randolph, Hank Azaria and Jane Adams (the best part of “Hung,” that raunchy HBO train wreck of yesteryear). Say you gave the show a Jocelyn-ectomy; say she and Tedros and the entire Spahn Mansion high jinks were this offscreen problem that they had to talk about and manage (but also try to profit from). That could be brutally effective. But then what would the Weeknd do?MORRIS I love the idea of a starless “Idol.” It’s funny: There is no shortage of recent television about either famous artists or our obsession with them — “Dave,” Paper Boi in “Atlanta,” “Daisy Jones & the Six,” “The Swarm” — and not many of them are terribly enlightening about how fame feels. Mass culture enhanced and exacerbated its modern incarnation yet continues to be lousy at illuminating critiques of it.Not even the Weeknd really seems to have an answer for what celebrity is, what makes someone a star. (So many times in this show we hear someone say that so-and-so is a star, but it’s definitely not Jocelyn.) The one character who approximates the requirements is Tedros — in the world of the show, the outsize magnetism belongs to him. Of course, that fame is artificial; his worshipers are more afraid than admiring. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover his heroes are Ike Turner and Ron O’Neal’s Youngblood Priest in “Super Fly.” At some point, Tedros looks at up, searchingly, at an almost life-size photo of Prince, a star who is known to have had his own moments of Tedrosity.The show is strange about Black men and sex. And no one in the show talks about it. A funny intergenerational fender-bender happens when Azaria’s Chaim implores Leia to describe Tedros and she keeps identifying him as a person of color, and Chaim keeps asking whether she’s trying to say he’s Black. The whole show is like that about Tedros and Moses Sumney’s Izaak, its two Black male characters: tentative. It doesn’t know what more to do with a scenario that’s freighted with this country’s long history of racialized sex than to be a troll about it.I’m with you two: For all the sex and vulgarity we see and hear about, the show has no idea how to convey what’s pleasurable about it, about what we come to certain pop music to experience.I know we don’t know where this going, how it’s going to end. I don’t know whether anyone should care, or even what would be a satisfying outcome for Tedros in Sunday’s finale. All I know is that when Destiny proposed murder, I clapped. More

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      ‘The Idol’: The Weeknd, Sam Levinson and Lily Rose-Depp on Their Graphic Pop Drama

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      In an interview, the Weeknd, Sam Levinson and Lily Rose-Depp discussed their controversial new HBO drama. “Running headfirst into that fire is what thrills us all,” Levinson said.From left, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd), Sam Levinson and Lily-Rose Depp during filming of “The Idol.” The series, premiering Sunday on HBO, has already been the subject of scathing reports and reviews.Eddy Chen/HBOLast month, the director Sam Levinson and his stars, Abel Tesfaye (a.k.a. the Weeknd) and Lily-Rose Depp, walked into the Lumière Theater at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of the first two episodes of their show, “The Idol,” to a standing ovation. The lights hadn’t yet dimmed, but celebrity fuels Cannes, where ovations are cheap. By the time the screening was over, the amped-up crowd was on its feet again and critics were racing out to fire off some of the most scathing reviews to emerge from this year’s event, with pans studded with barbs like “regressive,” “chauvinistic,” “skin-crawling” and “grim disaster.”“The Idol” centers on a chart-busting pop star, Jocelyn (Depp), who, in the wake of a nervous breakdown, is prepping for a comeback. Surrounded by handlers — the cast includes Hank Azaria, Troye Sivan, Jane Adams, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and the horror-film impresario Eli Roth — Jocelyn has made a lot of money for a lot of self-interested people. One night at a Los Angeles dance club, she meets Tedros (Tesfaye), a smooth-talking enigma with a rattail. Before long, she has invited him back to her mansion and they’re grinding in the shadows, and a mystery has taken root: What in the world is she doing with this guy?Created by Levinson, Tesfaye and Reza Fahim, “The Idol,” which premieres on Sunday, was already a heat-seeking target by the time it played at Cannes. In April 2022, word hit that its original director, Amy Seimetz, had left the show amid a creative overhaul. For whatever reason, the brain trust at HBO decided to pump up the show’s notoriety in a teaser, released three months later, that trumpeted Levinson and Tesfaye as “the sick & twisted minds” behind “the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.” But unwanted attention arrived this past March in a damning Rolling Stone article that, among other rebukes, accused Levinson’s version of being “a rape fantasy.” That teaser has since disappeared from HBO’s YouTube channel.Levinson, Tesfaye and other “Idol” collaborators have vigorously defended the show and its creators. “The process on the set was unbelievably creative,” Azaria said at a news conference a day after the Cannes premiere, as Adams nodded along. “I’ve been on many, many a dysfunctional set, believe me,” Azaria continued. “This was the exact opposite.”For his part, Levinson, who is best known for “Euphoria,” yet another HBO show about a beautiful young woman in crisis, said at the news conference that the specifics in the article felt “completely foreign.” But he also seemed to welcome the controversy.“When my wife read me the article,” he explained, “I looked at her and I just said, ‘I think that we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.’”On the day after the “Idol” news conference, I met with Levinson, Tesfaye and Depp — whose father, Johnny Depp, was also at the festival this year — for a sit-down at the Carlton Cannes, one of the grand hotels that faces the Mediterranean in this rarefied resort city. We talked about the show while tucked into a private patio corner, just out of earshot of nervously hovering publicists and other minders. During our chat, Levinson and his two colleagues alluded to the negative reviews, but if they were upset by them, they didn’t show or share it.“I’m still spinning from it,” Levinson said of the premiere. “It was maybe the most surreal moment I’ve had — I don’t really leave my house much.” These are edited excerpts from the interview.Can we talk about the genesis of “The Idol”?SAM LEVINSON Abel and I have known each other for quite a few years, and we’ve always wanted to work together. We got on a Zoom because I’d heard he has this project. The genesis was he said, “Look, if I wanted to start a cult, I could. And I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing.”ABEL TESFAYE I actually don’t remember saying that [laughs]. I think I was just trying to say anything to finally work with you. I’ve always wanted to work with Sam; we’ve been friends forever. It was more about celebrity culture and how much power they have.How much power they have?TESFAYE It’s probably hard to believe, but I can’t see myself in that way. I never have. Even when I move around with security, it feels so weird because I don’t ever want to be seen. I feel like I have to be seen — fans want to see who they listen to, who they love. But for me, celebrity culture was always fascinating, and how much power they have on their fans.Depp plays a pop star named Jocelyn who comes under the sway of an enigmatic man named Tedros, played by Tesfaye.Eddy Chen/HBOLily, you grew up in a famous family, but it was fame by proxy.LILY-ROSE DEPP I’ve experienced it by proxy since birth. That’s simultaneously a strange thing and also not strange at all, because I don’t know anything different. My childhood looks nothing like Jocelyn’s, a character who has been working from a young age, and who was a child performer and had a mother who was pushing her. My childhood was never going to be “normal,” but they gave us the best sense of normalcy that we could have.Did you watch any of the Britney Spears documentaries?TESFAYE It’s not about Britney at all, but how could we not pull inspiration from Britney, from Madonna, from every pop star that’s gone through any kind of serious pain? I’ve always called Lily one of the creators of the show, because I couldn’t write Jocelyn until we knew who was going to play her. Once Lily got the role, she and Sam worked together on creating the character. What I could provide was the music industry around her — management, labels, touring, everything that I know.DEPP I was so nervous about the musical aspect. It’s not what I do and this character has been doing this her entire life. I remember the first time that I had to sing in front of Abel, I was, like, I’m going to blow my brains out. Little by little, we got to know each other more and got comfortable with each other.LEVINSON We basically moved into Abel’s house, which was our shooting location. We knew that we were going to shoot the entire show in this one place, so we turned it into a live set.Abel, obviously performing for a live audience is different from performing in a music video, and this is very different.TESFAYE I never wrote Tedros for myself; it was Sam who planted the idea. I just focused on being Tedros and living as the character and spending all my time with Sam and listening and allowing him to just be my teacher. Tedros is such a dark, complicated, scary, pathetic human — I had to just distance myself from who I am. And it’s scary, you know, it’s a big risk.“Tedros is such a dark, complicated, scary, pathetic human,” Tesfaye said of his character.Eddy Chen/HBOSo far, the only pathetic thing about him is his hair.TESFAYE We made sure of it. He’s pathetic. It’s funny, we were in the theater watching Tedros and there are moments where only us three were laughing. People have no idea ——LEVINSON —— where it goes. The moment that Tedros clicked for me and, I think, for Abel was, imagine you have all of this ambition, all of this drive, this ability to tell a story through music. But none of the talent. So you have to find a puppet, someone to work through. I also think part of what was fascinating is that he’s rolling up to this mansion and it’s a world that he’s never been invited into. She opens this door ——TESFAYE —— like Dracula, inviting him in.In the first episode there’s a lot of comedy about the intimacy coordinator who doesn’t want Jocelyn to expose part of her body. What is agency for someone brought up in a bubble?DEPP I totally respect and love intimacy coordinators. I think they belong on sets, and that it’s important to make everybody feel safe. I’m very comfortable saying, “I’m fine to do this or not this,” but some people aren’t. At the same time, you have to have this nudity rider, it has to be submitted in advance and it has to be signed by this person and the lawyer. It becomes this very structured legal thing when the purpose is to give freedom and safety to the person who may or may not be doing nudity. You literally can’t make a decision about your own body.“I think that they are two twisted psychopaths who love each other,” Depp said. “She’s going to use him, too.”Eddy Chen/HBOIs Jocelyn her own person? She’s surrounded by this apparatus. Abel, is the show inspired by your life in terms of wanting to do what you want to do?TESFAYE There have been moments where I’ve felt like it is me-against-them. But because of my situation — I own my masters — I’m very fortunate. But what if I didn’t? They would automatically win: 99.99999 percent of pop stars don’t have that and are in Jocelyn’s position. So it’s not autobiographical; it’s like an alternate reality.LEVINSON That’s part of what we wanted to set up. Here is this machine and we’re not sure how complicit she is. We see how it grinds her down. But that moment of agency is when they’re in bed and Tedros says, “Maybe I should move in for work purposes.” You see this slight smile on her face. That’s her going, I’ve got him. He’s hooked.DEPP It’s going to be easy for the audience to immediately think, Oh my God, he’s using her. I think that they are two twisted psychopaths who love each other. She’s going to use him, too.TESFAYE Everything is very intentional. We knew that the reaction was going to be the way it is because of those two episodes.Much of the early talk surrounding the show has been about the amount of nudity. Lily, were you surprised by how your body was shown?DEPP No, honestly. Her bareness, physically and emotionally, was a big part of the discussions that we all had. Those were decisions I was completely involved in. There are many women who have felt exploited by the nudity they’ve done and have thought, I didn’t feel great about that. But I’m comfortable performing in that way, I enjoy it. It informed the character. In the conversation around the risqué aspects, there’s the implication that it’s something being consistently imposed upon women. Obviously, that has been true a lot historically.LEVINSON It also plays into that feeling that the audience has: Oh, she’s a victim. She has to be a victim. I believe people will underestimate Jocelyn as a character because of how exposed she is.I wondered about all the nudity, and about having a Black man be the villain.LEVINSON Playing into those stereotypes in the first couple of episodes is important for the journey and the arc and the emotional experience. It has a way of disorienting us because of our knowledge of who we are, and what has happened in the world. I think the audience will slowly begin to see who the true villain of the piece is.TESFAYE We wanted to make a fun show, as well. It’s a thriller. There are a lot of topics, but it’s really important that it’s entertaining as well.Do you worry about how the show will be received, given that larger discussions about race, gender and representation are so fraught right now?LEVINSON That’s what makes it exciting, that these discussions are fraught. I think running headfirst into that fire is what thrills us all.TESFAYE Someone’s got to do it. No one’s really doing it now. They just need to see the whole show.DEPP We always knew that we were going to make something that was going to be provocative and perhaps not for everyone. That was a draw for all of us. I don’t think any of us were interested in making anything that was going to be, you know, fun for the whole family.TESFAYE When I first started making music, it was the exact same thing. It was provocative, and I knew it was going to be tough for people. And a lot of people didn’t like it. Not to compare it, but I feel that this is kind of like that again. This is not going to be for everybody, and that’s fine. We’re not politicians. More

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      HBO Says “The Idol” Is Sleazy. You Be the Judge.

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      At Cannes, the sex-filled show is drawing plenty of controversy. That just means “we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer,” Sam Levinson says.In March, Rolling Stone published an article detailing the trouble-plagued production of “The Idol,” a new HBO drama from the “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson. According to the magazine, nearly 80 percent of the show, about a pop singer (Lily-Rose Depp) who falls under the spell of a Svengali figure (the Weeknd), had been filmed with the director Amy Seimetz before Levinson stepped in to rewrite and reshoot the entire thing. As a result, said one crew member, it had transformed from a music-industry satire into a “rape fantasy” in which Depp’s character must endure a series of demeaning sex acts.At the Cannes Film Festival, where two episodes premiered this week, Levinson was asked what he made of the report.“When my wife read me the article,” Levinson said, “I looked at her and said, ‘I think we’re about to have the biggest show of the summer.’”When it comes to controversy, Levinson and his collaborators have clearly decided to lean in: Even HBO’s marketing for “The Idol” calls it the “sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.” At times, the show seems reverse-engineered to generate think-pieces and indignant tweet-storms; if attention is oxygen, Levinson seems to have calculated that “The Idol” will burn brighter as long as people keep talking about it. Reviews from Cannes have been poor, but as long as they mention the outrageous scenarios and envelope-pushing sex scenes, won’t you be tempted to tune in?Is “The Idol” really as sleazy as has been promised/warned? Let me try to summarize the first two episodes, and you be the judge.The show begins with Depp’s pop star, Jocelyn, posing for a photo shoot, naked but for a barely cinched robe and a hospital wristband. The latter is a wink at rumors that Jocelyn experienced a nervous breakdown after her mother’s death, but it’s also meant to be a come-on, explains Nikki (Jane Adams), a cynical record executive: If men think Jocelyn is a little crazy, they might imagine they have the chance to bed her.Almost immediately, Jocelyn’s team is hit with twin crises. The first seems tailor-made to get the internet’s goat: Jocelyn’s robe keeps falling away to reveal her nipples, and a buzzkill intimacy coordinator keeps trying to halt the session, no matter how often Jocelyn and her team explain they’re fine with it. Eventually, Jocelyn’s manager, Chaim (Hank Azaria), locks the intimacy coordinator in a bathroom.As all of that is going on, a photo is leaked online that shows Jocelyn with sexual fluids on her face. But she seems utterly unbothered. Is this because she is so sexually self-possessed that she can’t be shamed? Given that she takes sensual showers while wearing false eyelashes and full makeup, it may owe more to Levinson’s depiction of the character as an always-on male fantasy.That night, freewheeling Jocelyn heads to a nightclub, where she meets Tedros, the establishment’s mysterious owner, played by the Weeknd (the series co-creator, born Abel Tesfaye, who is so flatteringly lit that he often looks more like an A.I. rendering). There is an instant connection between the two for reasons not depicted onscreen, and it isn’t long before they get together in a stairwell, an encounter she later thinks of at home while engaging in a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation.Jocelyn’s assistant (Rachel Sennott) is not a fan of this blossoming union: “He’s so rapey,” she tells Jocelyn. “I kind of like it,” replies the star, who invites Tedros to her mansion to hear her next single. He expertly negs Jocelyn, telling her the song isn’t sung with any sexual authority, but he has a plan for that: After running a tumbler of ice down Jocelyn’s frequently bare sternum, he pulls her robe over her head, chokes her with its belt, uses a switchblade to cut a mouth-hole in the material (the things this poor robe has been through in only one episode!) and orders Jocelyn to sing.In the second episode, Jocelyn proudly presents this orgasmic remix to her horrified team. Told it’s too late to make changes, Jocelyn is dismayed but still manages to add a cold tumbler to her usual afternoon solo sex session. A girl has needs, after all.But when Jocelyn shows up for a video shoot, makeup artists have to cover the cuts and bruises on her inner thighs that remain from that session. This makes her late to set, where she eventually dissolves into a crying mess. This also means that she’s particularly vulnerable to the machinations of Tedros, who kindly leaves a shock-collar orgy to move his entourage into Jocelyn’s mansion and engage in more kinky sex with her. There’s a lot of dirty talk so grossly delivered by the Weeknd that you may need to mute and switch to closed captioning when the show premieres on June 4.Is it all a little too much? Of course, and that’s the point. At the news conference for “The Idol,” Levinson was asked how he calibrated the sex scenes and near-constant nudity without going too far. For a second, he looked confused.“Sometimes, things that might be revolutionary are taken too far,” Levinson replied. More

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      ‘Wolf’ Review: Animal Behavior

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      This psychological thriller unfolds in a brutal clinic for young people who feel they are animals trapped in human bodies.In the most powerful scene in “Wolf,” a haunting psychological thriller, Jacob (George MacKay) kneels before a caged wild animal. Like the creature, Jacob feels trapped: He believes he is a wolf born as a human.His body isn’t his only cage. When the story begins, Jacob is committed to a conversion clinic run by a man called the Zookeeper (Paddy Considine). The institute’s young patients — who identify variously, including as a panda, squirrel and spider — endure therapies designed to tame and civilize them. It is no coincidence, however, that it is the overseers who come off as the savage brutes: To convince one resident that she is a girl, not a parrot, the Zookeeper dangles her out of a window and challenges her to fly.At first, Jacob is a vacant and uncomplaining patient. But some nights, he lets the wolf inside take over, his deltoids undulating as he prowls on all fours. He finds a companion in Wildcat (Lily-Rose Depp), a troubled, longtime resident of the center who bonds with Jacob on an animal level.Written and directed by Nathalie Biancheri, the movie maintains a mostly even tone. Despite dashes of uncanny humor, Biancheri directs with remove. The downside to this approach is that certain sequences tend to feel like acting exercises, and though MacKay and Depp perform with devoted bodily fervor, it’s hard to connect to their characters.Still, Biancheri’s imagery is consistently evocative, and her interest in how captivity affects dignity at times recalls the work of Yorgos Lanthimos. Only near the end will the story really give you pause, when it verges on explaining away species dysphoria as a trauma response. “Wolf” may lead with an open curiosity, but in tackling big ideas about identity, openness is not always enough.WolfRated R for dehumanization, desired or not. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More