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Drug addict pop star Lovato in Bali shortly before her breakdown in 2018: "I wasn't really honest"
Photo: YouTube Originals
Basically, she nailed herself to the cross for all of us.
At one point in the documentary "Dancing with the Devil" it is actually stated that the singer and actress Demi Lovato is a "martyr".
The woman does not like to wear a crown of thorns on her head and hopefully her palms are impervious.
But she has apparently endured great suffering on behalf of humanity and fought the fight with demons called crystal meth, cocaine and heroin, while she had to endure abuse by various tormentors.
US entertainer Lovato, born in 1992 into a family of Mexican, Irish, and Italian ancestors, performed in beauty competitions as a child.
She became known as an actress in the Disney Channel film "Camp Rock" (2008) and had her biggest hit with the song "Skyscraper" in 2011. In addition to her artistic work, Lovato, who now lives in California, is also loved by her fans for revered their confession of mental and physical weaknesses.
As a 19-year-old, she reported publicly about an "unhealthy relationship with food" and attacks of self-harm.
At 21, she confessed to being in a rehab facility because of her drug addiction.
Now at the age of 28, she described in interviews even before the premiere of the documentary "Dancing with the Devil" that she had suffered three strokes and a heart attack in 2018 because of a drug overdose.
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Lovato at the premiere of "Dancing with the Devil" in Los Angeles
Photo: YouTube Originals
Lovato calls the film a "gigantic lesson", which can be seen on YouTube in four 20-minute sections.
One of the previously unknown horrors about Lovato's living conditions presented therein is the description of two sexual abuse experiences.
She was raped by her dealer on the night of her overdose;
"I was left to die after he had molested me," says Lovato in front of director Michael D. Ratner's camera.
Years earlier, she had been raped once.
YouTube accompanied the publication of the documentary on Tuesday with the presentation of a "live premiere" from Los Angeles.
At the beginning of this premiere you can see the entertainer standing in front of a photo wall and proclaiming that she wants to »live her truth«.
Then she sings a song with the lines “Lord, is there anyone?
Please send me anyone! «.
The appearance was greeted with applause from listeners apparently sitting in cars.
After all, Lovato is having an interview with the director who shot the latest documentary about her life and admits: "In the past, I wasn't really honest."
The film is the confession of an often "deadly" star
It is then a life confession pious to redemption and a bit obsessively aroused, which the professed Christian Lovato makes in “Dancing with the Devil”.
"I've been trying to be free for 13 years," says the film at the beginning.
Friends, relatives and former employees of Lovato report on nicely lit witness chairs, armchairs and sofas, sometimes with a picturesque Californian background.
That she had been "deadly unhappy" for a long time, that she had often hidden her true mood, and that she did a brilliant job despite all the hardships.
Concert recordings show how she celebrated six years of drug abstinence on stage in 2018.
You learn about the constraints of the pop star life, the constant control by her staff and see how Lovato sits listlessly in front of a plate of fruit and pokes at berries and fruits.
The power of the story, which Lovato and her director bring together from many interview snippets, memory images and drawn emergency reconstructions, arises from the consolation of an at least temporary rescue, which also makes literary reports of drug experiences such as Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre's "Panic Heart" absolutely heartwarming.
And it arises from the charm of the singer Lovato, who says in a slightly shaky but resolute voice that she is now in a "zone of stability".
The Demi Lovato documentary “Simply Complicated” from 2017 is available just a few clicks further on YouTube.
The director at the time was called Hannah Lux Davis, and the subjects were practically the same: Lovato's attempts to break out of career constraints, early bullying experiences in school, her eating disorders, her drug addiction.
The director Ratner makes the reconstruction of Lovato's collapse almost three years ago the dramaturgical core of the new film.
Her relapse began, according to Lovato, when, during a photo shoot, she suddenly asked herself, "Why am I sober?" This is followed by pictures from Amsterdam in which a bartender a few days later pours some schnapps into her mouth.
Lovato later lists the drugs she took on the crash night in Los Angeles.
When she woke up again in the hospital, she could no longer recognize her loved ones.
To this day, she says, she has impaired vision.
She is forbidden to drive a car.
The documentation should help to deal with a trauma
Towards the end, “Dancing with the Devil” says that Lovato was lucky and is now too old to make it to the “Klub 27”, where a popular legend has died at the age of 27, show greats like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain gathered.
Of course, the film itself is also part of a long tradition of more or less tragic artist portraits about Joplin, Winehouse, Whitney Houston or, most recently, about Britney Spears, who is fortunately still alive ("Framing Britney Spears").
One of the paradoxes of the genre is that a warning at the beginning of every episode of "Dancing with the Devil" indicates that people susceptible to drug abuse and eating disorders should perhaps not watch the film because the content shown triggers them badly could.
Lovato expressly declares the documentary film as an invitation to viewers not to remain silent when they find themselves in difficulties similar to themselves.
"It took a quarantine so that I could work on my trauma," claims Lovato once in the film that was shot during the corona pandemic.
Before that, she just didn't have time to "dig really deep and tackle the matter."
Can you still be a little irritated by the enthusiasm with which Lovato's supposedly best friend spreads her emotional misery in "Dancing with the Devil"?
Can you find it frivolous when Lovato's stepfather (and longtime manager) asserts at her mother's side how thoroughly the daughter has hidden her suffering from them?
Lovato once performed her song »Sober«, in which, in 2018, shortly before the collapse in the role of a repentant, she told her parents about her crashes.
They ask for forgiveness for being intoxicated and for spilling their drinks on the floor, it says.
And that she unfortunately felt mortally ill inside.
Hopefully Demi Lovato's film confession will really help her recovery.