[bravely] i liked the weeknd's new movie

In 2022, Canadian singer Abel Tesfaye opened his mouth to sing at a Los Angeles stadium show and nothing came out. A true nightmare-worthy scenario. I still have dreams about botching my high school theater productions in various ways, and I wake up in a cold sweat each time. The Weeknd had that kind of shit happen to him for real. That must have been an insane experience, and therefore I do not fault him in the slightest for wanting to make a psychological thriller film about it.

We all know the Weeknd. Record-breaking songs, Super Bowl halftime show, duets with rogue rappers and louche lounge singers alike. The thing is, we don’t know the Weeknd. Still! After all these years. He began his career as an enigma, wrapped in a question mark, chopped into a line of cocaine. His moody, mysterious mixtapes were a hallmark of the early 2010s, thrilling audiences who were tired of faux-apocalyptic dance music in major keys (“can’t promise tomorrow, but I promise tonight…dalé”). Subsequent releases deepened his allure, as he offered us catchy songs about doing so much blow your face goes numb, and songs about inviting a third woman to his place after previously having sex with two women, then feeling cranky about not being able to perform at his usual sexual level for that third woman.

“When I’m fucked up, that’s the real me,” he cooed to us, and yet after all this Bret Easton Ellisian partying and bleary 5:30am confessionals, I don’t think we know who that “real me” is. For example, he sings about being a degenerate. Yet his consistent output, eager participation in the pop music marketing system, and general professionalism all suggest a work ethic that cannot coexist with such epic benders. Sure, maybe he’s channeling an earlier, crazier time on his records. Maybe he’s really good at balancing business and pleasure. But we already know what a decade-plus in the spotlight whilst coked to the gills looks like…Jax Taylor from Vanderpump Rules. That's not Abel! Jax makes Abel look like Angela Merkel.

Anyway, the Weeknd knows that we don’t know him. But I think he wants us to know who he is. And he has a bifurcated plan for how to show us. One part of the plan to keep making slick, grandiose synth-pop full of lyrics where he gobbles drugs, ruins his relationships, and threatens various formats of metaphorical and literal suicide. The other part of the plan is to act in movies and television.

I’m not like the other girls—I liked The Idol. The HBO show where Tesfaye plays a vaguely cult leader-y guy named TEDROS TEDROS, who doms and then is dommed by Lily-Rose Depp’s mononymic pop star JOCELYN, was a mess. But it was an interesting mess! By the end of its short and deranged run, I decided it was a solid swing at depicting the absurdity of pop stardom, which is both a job and a deification, and which demands simultaneous free creative expression and strict adherence to capitalist codes and structures. Janet Jackson said her last name was Control because she understood, quite early on, how important the element of control is in pop stardom. You have to maintain control of your career behind the scenes; you have to lose control, or at least pretend to, to get people to fall in love with you; controlling this tension over time is the life's work of a pop musician.

A collaboration between the Weeknd, his The Idol co-creator Reza Fahim, and director Trey Edward Shults, the new film Hurry Up Tomorrow takes The Idol’s set of themes (what is a pop star? why are they so damn special? why does everyone like me when I do not like myself?) and makes them even more literal. Abel Tesfaye plays Abel “the Weeknd” Tesfaye. He is on a big world tour, booked and busy. He's encouraged/manipulated by his manager (Barry Keoghan, doing classic 'music industry sleazebag from across the pond' shit), while mourning the departure of an unseen ex-girlfriend. His singing voice is shaky. He weeps a lot. When he threatens to cancel a show, his manager opens the door of his dressing room to amplify the sound of crowds cheering for him: they're here for YOU. You know the drill.

Meanwhile a young woman played by Jenna Ortega blazes a trail across the country in a beat-up SUV. We don’t know much about her, except that she likes to have a can of gasoline on her at all times, and she has tickets to see the Weeknd. The two shall meet, and dramatic events shall unfold after their meeting, until we reach a proper conclusion and the credits can roll to the tune of the Weeknd.

I don’t want to spoil much of the “plot” of this movie because there isn’t much of one. Shults unspools the drama in typical indie prestige fashion: shaky camera, film grain, strobe lighting, dream sequence that would please guys who say things like “last night was Lynchian, bro.” Things get hella psychological. It’s more of a vibe than a movie.

As always, I find the Professional Pop Star elements of the production to be the most interesting. Early in the movie, the camera whizzes by a backstage crafty setup that looks robust. It made me wonder what's on the Weeknd’s tour rider—I bet he has premium snacks for every possible scenario. Later, Tesfaye smokes a cigarette on a private plane then extinguishes it on an untouched disc of filet mignon.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is the Weeknd's feature film debut. Is the Weeknd a "good actor"? Probably not. Though he might have taken some classes at the Lily-Rose Depp School of Crying Single, Significant Tears, he lacks the nuance of his professional actor co-stars. But he has "beautiful face, huge" and more importantly, he's willing to get a little weird. And I think the weirdness is key.

You won’t be surprised to hear this music blogger found the soundtrack to be a highlight. I saw it in a Dolby theater, and in the dynamic context of the premium format movie theater, the Weeknd's music never sounded so damn slick. And it made me think about how sonically impeccable everything about the Weeknd's music is. Some of his biggest hits were produced by Max Martin, master of airtight pop. The decade the Weeknd most often evokes is the 1980s, the decade when technology allowed producers to achieve new levels of precision. And each of the Weeknd's many ululations—ohhhh, oooh yeh—are executed with skill and placed with care, like a perfectly cooked filet mignon on a private plane's special plate. The lyrics might be messy, but the sound never is.

Yet the Weeknd builds these elaborate gothic cathedrals and insists he is a gargoyle crouched on their buttresses. I am horrid, he says. I'm a nasty boy, giving you a nasty groove. We have never believed him. So he's started finding other ways to tell us. He dressed like a weird guy covered in bandages. Then he dressed like an old man. Now he's in television and film, acting like a dick. He lets himself look like a real idiot in The Idol—gagging on hard liquor, choking down postnasal drip—and he does the same in Hurry Up Tomorrow. He yells at Jenna Ortega, mournfully sniffs bumps off Barry Keoghan's proffered wrist, does burbling vocal exercises and manic pre-show dumbbell presses. He's often dead-eyed and creepy, and even when he smiles, his countenance is sinister. At one point you see a camera dive down his throat and zoom in on his gooey vocal chords. Is this the real him?? Is that his real glottis??

You could look at the Weeknd's acting career thus far and see pure solipsism, or cynical album promo. But I think he's trying to tell us something with his acting choices. He's trying out many different ways to tell us how fucked up it is to be a pop star. How dehumanizing, how alienating. I'm always going to be down for that. As Addison Rae says, "ugh music is so good" "music is power" "music is wow." And I care about the people who make the music for me. If someone in the most elite echelon of pop stardom wants to tell me about how the recording industry is transmogrifying him into a goblin, I want to listen to him. Even if it means enduring an abstract dream sequence that felt like it took three hours.

When the Weeknd lost his voice at his stadium show, it was supposed to be the last show of that tour. He rescheduled it twice over, and played an additional two makeup shows in Toronto that had been canceled for non-voice-loss reasons. He is a consummate professional. His music is immaculate, and he will always get the job done. But his fictional avatars are his Dorian Gray portraits: sniffling, gurgling, tired and rude. Dudes with zero aura who cannot help but repel their admirers. When the Weeknd first appeared on screen at the "fan event" I attended, a girl behind me screamed. When the credits rolled, everyone was very quiet. No applause for Mr. Weeknd. Maybe he's sick of applause?

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