How Honest Can Demi Lovato Be?

Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her. It took about two months to recover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years’ worth of sleep, playing board games or taking a single lap around the hospital floor for exercise. Blind spots made it nearly impossible to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through her peripheral vision and typed using voice notes.

“It was interesting how fast I adapted,” she said in a recent interview. “I didn’t leave myself time to really feel sad about it. I just was like, how do I fix it?”

Lovato, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable — she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time. She got her start on kids’ TV and made the tricky leap to adult stardom, releasing six albums (two platinum, four gold), serving as a judge on “The X Factor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will & Grace” and amassing 100 million Instagram followers — all while managing an eating disorder since she was a child, drug addiction that started in her teens, coming out as queer and the constant pressure of being an exceptionally famous person.

She recounts her relapse and overdose unblinkingly in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil,” which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival this week and will be released on YouTube in four episodes starting March 23. A song with the same name, a brassy, haunting showcase for Lovato’s powerhouse voice, anchors a new album, “Dancing With the Devil … The Art of Starting Over,” due April 2.

Documentaries from pop stars about themselves have become a cottage industry, but most feel like sanitized marketing tools and grasp for friction, like the stress of fame or loneliness. Lovato’s film, which follows “Simply Complicated” in 2017, is all tension — 90-plus minutes of mostly interviews directed by Michael D. Ratner — and doesn’t gloss over the ugliest realities. She reveals excruciating details about a history of sexual assault, self-harm and family trauma, one troubling scenario colliding into another like dominoes. The film and album are part of a comeback attempt that puts a core part of the Demi Lovato proposition to the test: How honest can she really be?