Peter Howell: Abel Tesfaye’s ‘The Idol’ is clearly not a family show, but is it an offensive one?

The Idol, Episodes 1 & 2

Starring Lily-Rose Depp, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, Jane Adams, Hank Azaria, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dan Levy and Eli Roth. Written by Reza Fahim, Sam Levinson and Abel Tesfaye. Created by Sam Levinson and Abel Tesfaye. Reviewed at the Cannes Film Festival; premieres June 4 on HBO.

CANNES, FRANCE Appearances deceive right from the start of “The Idol,” the sex-and-stardom TV series starring Lily-Rose Depp and Toronto’s Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye that’s premiering to applause and debate at the Cannes Film Festival.

The first episode opens with a close-up of Depp’s title character, Jocelyn, a pop star several years into her global fame. She mugs various emotions — one of them “vulnerable” — for an encouraging photographer during a photo shoot for her new album.

Jocelyn is dressed in a barely there red robe that shows most of her breasts, but then she decides it’s OK to show more of them. The on-set “intimacy co-ordinator” swoops in and insists she cover her nipples. Jocelyn declares, “It’s my body” and keeps them on display.

The intimacy co-ordinator sputters in protest, only to be locked in a washroom by Jocelyn’s co-manager, Chaim (Hank Azaria), who spent a lot of money on the photo session and who isn’t willing to wait the 48 hours it would take to rewrite the intimacy agreement.

Jocelyn is so self-aware and confident, she barely blinks a few moments later when told that a selfie of her in a highly intimate moment — one that might hurt ticket sales for her upcoming tour — has hit the internet.

This obviously isn’t your typical “A Star Is Born” type of Hollywood story, in which a naive young talent has to fight her way past the sharks of Tinseltown.

Or maybe it is, but in a different way. We soon learn that Jocelyn is mourning the death of her mother, healing from a split from her now ex-boyfriend and still in the throes of what some are calling a “psychological breakdown,” all of which happened in the past year. She’s also fretting about her music, which sells a lot but which she fears is “too superficial.”

This latter concern brings her into the orbit of Tedros, a mysterious club owner and talent manager played by actor and series co-creator Tesfaye, the Toronto pop/R&B superstar formerly known as The Weeknd.

Some people describe Tedros as “godly” while others call him “rapey” — and Jocelyn admits “I kinda like that about him.”

Tedros wants to teach her how to make better music by putting more sex into it. His notion of seduction involves hoods, knives and other censor-testing paraphernalia.

Jocelyn is into kink, too. There are two scenes of her masturbating while also choking herself. Edgy stuff like this, along with considerable profanity and female nudity, is going to oblige HBO to have a lot of viewer advisories when the five-part series debuts June 4. (The first two episodes are having their world premiere at Cannes.)

“The Idol” is clearly not a family show, but is it an offensive one? Does it cross a line and demean women? The questions have been asked and debated here in Cannes, despite the warm reception and five-minute ovation given to cast members and co-creator Sam Levinson (TV’s “Euphoria”) following the show’s world premiere late Monday night.

On the plus side, the show has Depp, daughter of actor Johnny, who opened the Cannes fest May 16 with his new movie, “Jeanne du Barry.” Lily-Rose is entirely convincing as a pop star and celebrity who is having trouble coping with fame — she grew up watching what her dad had to deal with, including a recent notorious divorce from the actor Amber Heard.

Lily-Rose Depp brings a combination of silk and steel to her portrayal of Jocelyn, something that really comes through in the second episode, when she struggles to make a video for her new single, “World-Class Sinner,” which involves a dance number set in a strip club.

She does take after take trying to get the mood right, to the point where her feet are bloodied and she can barely stand. These scenes have a ring of truth about them as do other scenes both inside and outside the celebrity bubble. The production values are strong.

“The Idol” also has Tesfaye, who knows the ins and outs of the pop music game and who looks convincingly creepy as Tedros — he told a press conference Tuesday that he used Dracula as his inspiration.

But we don’t see all that much of Tesfaye in the first two episodes screened, so it’s hard to really say how good he is as actor, and where the show can go after the girl-meets-Svengali setup.

Tesfaye hinted the matchup with Jocelyn and Tedros isn’t all it seems — “It goes to something else” — and he considers Jocelyn’s situation to be the “alternate reality” of how his own career could have gone, had he not worked hard to avoid it.

Another misleading notion about “The Idol” is that Jocelyn is based on Britney Spears, who is referenced in an early episode, as well as Madonna, Donna Summer and “Basic Instinct” star Sharon Stone.

“We’re not trying to tell a story about any particular pop star,” Levinson said.

Tesfaye acknowledged that he and Levinson originally wanted “to make a dark, twisted fairy tale (about) the music industry,” but it had evolved into something different, which may explain why original series director Amy Seimetz (“The Girlfriend Experience”) left the project.

Depp said she found it was like working “with family” on the show, despite its explicit content. Actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays Destiny, the other co-manager of Jocelyn, said “The Idol” will become more “femme forward” as it goes on.

This remains to be seen. “The Idol” is not as novel or as naughty as it pretends to be, despite being billed as “the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood.”

Hollywood has been shocking audiences since the days of Mae West, during the other Roaring Twenties of 100 years ago.

But there are some funny moments.

Such as when Dan Levy, as Jocelyn’s publicist, and Jane Adams, as her record label boss, are talking about how best to spin the embarrassing selfie incident to the press.

Adams’ characters wants to go with the angle that Jocelyn is a “feminist hero” for enduring the social shaming.

Levy’s has a different plan: “I’m going to start with ‘victim’ and move up from there.”

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