temptress

Atop a mid-tempo beat that lightly recalls the muffled retro-funk of “Say So,” the song that made Doja Cat a star, Carpenter plays the unbothered temptress with winking humor: “Say you can’t sleep, baby I know, that’s that me, espresso.”

Instead of sliding into obscurity, the Mona Lisa becomes a temptress.

For nigh on 50 years, she has been cast as the villainess who broke up the group, the evil temptress who cast a spell on John Lennon, married him and proceeded to tear the time-eclipsing rock band asunder.

That movie, now rightly recognized as a masterpiece, had a famously rocky landing here in 2013, at Telluride’s 40th-anniversary edition, where audiences didn’t exactly warm to the disturbing, plot-free spectacle of Scarlett Johansson as an alien temptress sucking men’s bodies dry.

One victim was a lying, cheating boyfriend, the other his temptress.