[ad_1]
It’s been 13 years since she died, but it surely usually seems like Amy Winehouse by no means went away. The particulars of her life, all of the squalor and the glory, proceed to be raked over within the tabloids. Each new British singer from Adele and Raye struggles to flee the lengthy darkish shadow of her towering beehive. And the content material stream is rarely ending: after the legacy album editions, the books and Asif Kapadia‘s Oscar-winning documentary, we’ve, after a promotional marketing campaign that appears to have lasted for many of 2024, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic, Again To Black.
DAVID BOWIE IS ON THE COVER OF THE LATEST UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE
Let’s be clear: should you’re in search of dramatic perception into the raging soulstorm that fuelled her biggest music and tore her thoughts and physique aside, you’re barking up the fallacious tree. If it isn’t fairly the Hallmark model, Again To Black performs very secure with some very darkish supplies.
However it might be not possible to make a completely boring movie about Amy Winehouse. There are hints of one thing fascinating right here. Marisa Abel, one second wanting like Dot Cotton’s dissolute daughter, the following like a younger Streisand in a Ronnie Spector wig, is outstanding and her portrayal deserves a greater script. The primary third of the movie, following the gobby, gloriously proficient woman from Southgate by way of the coaching pens of the music business, resulting in a memorable encounter with Jonathan Ross, seize a few of her defiant spark. The primary encounter with Blake Fielder-Civil in a Camden boozer, the place he’s impressed to heights of seductive patter over a pint on the pool desk, trace at why Amy fell for him so laborious.
The important thing scene within the film may be late on, after one other failed reconciliation with Blake, the place Amy asks her dad to take her again to Soho for a go to to Ronnie Scott’s. She breathes in and sighs: “Pure intoxication.” Again To Black presents Winehouse as an artist in thrall, helpless earlier than the facility of a sure darkish glamour – whether or not she finds it in her nan’s black and white images of the 60s, the voice of Sarah Vaughan, the sound of the Shangri Las, a blond boy in a Fred Perry, or on the finish of a crack pipe.
The movie hints at these compulsions, however by no means actually observe by way of. Again to Black in the end seems like a movie pathologically afraid of offending anybody – or extra to the purpose, getting sued. Amy’s dad, Mitch, who felt so insulted by his portrayal in Kapadia’s 2015 documentary, is right here portrayed by Eddie Marsan as a proud, loving and anxious dad. Fiedler-Civil, Amy’s seducer, tormentor, and grand ardour, comes throughout as a type of blond SuperHans – a diamond geezer who simply occurs to seek out crack very moreish.
Arguably that is all a helpful corrective to the twisted pantomime variations the tabloids have studiously curated through the years. However turning this life and this expertise right into a product so inoffensive appears opposite to the very essence of Amy Winehouse.
[ad_2]
