The singer’s brutally frank documentary about the perils of addiction is an exhortation to those under stress to seek help
When the pop star Demi Lovato explains that she wants “to set the record straight about what it was that happened”, in her new documentary Dancing with the Devil, she is not messing around. The first two parts of the film, which were released on YouTube last week, tell the story of Lovato’s relapse into drug use and her near-fatal overdose in 2018. This is the era of selfies, of course, with everything documented and preserved, but a selfie captioned “Demi on crack for the first time” shocked me. This is a brutally frank account of her troubles, with seemingly nothing left out. If anyone remains in doubt that fame is a grim pact for most, and particularly for young women, then this puts the case to the jury, again and again.
Dancing with the Devil was the third documentary I had seen in the last month about a famous woman under unimaginable pressure, in unimaginable pain. I watched Framing Britney Spears and saw a charismatic pop star churned up by the spotlight, hounded wherever she went, cracking under the weight of it all. With heavy heart, I watched the difficult, moving Channel 4 film about Caroline Flack, made with the participation of her brave family. It was announced recently that Brittany Murphy, the Clueless star who died at the age of 32 in 2009, will be the subject of a new two-part documentary that promises to “cut through the tabloid noise” and “[craft] a grounded account of Brittany Murphy’s life struggles”.
