Back to Black: the film about Amy Winehouse that aims to polish the singer’s figure

Amy Winehouse She wanted to be remembered as a singer who made people have fun, or at least that’s what she wanted at the age of thirteen, according to the handwritten letter that the protagonist reads. Marisa Abelawith the unmistakable timbre of the singer’s voice, during the family party overflowing with wine in the father’s house with which it begins Back to black.

That teenager Amy and dad Mitch will soon sing together Take me to the moon and the director Sam Taylor Johnson (Fifty Shades of Gray AND Wandering boya biopic about the teenage John Lennon) makes it clear from the start that his view of the controversial Mr. Winehouse has nothing to do with the stark portrayal Asif Kapadia did in his documentary Amy.

The filmmaker prefers to avoid problems with the heirs by telling the life of Amy Winehouse almost literally from the confessional tone she gave to her songs, focusing on the successful second album that gives the film its name, which Amy wrote after a breakup from which she didn’t seem to recover never.

Back to black It has the structure of a musical, with songs capping each sequence and they put into words and music what was just seen on the screen, but that literalness flattens Amy’s search for inspiration and what’s more the constant repetition of each event, unfolded in action and performance, slows the narrative.

Back to black uses the traditional ascending and descending format and Taylor-Johnson uses it in duplicate when chronicling Winehouse’s relationship with fame on the one hand and her turbulent romance with Blake Fielder-Civil on the other.

Amy declares herself in the film as anachronistic, referring to her retro style of that first decade of the millennium, and also prefers to ignore feminism with a joke, but it is still striking that her portrait here seems so conditioned by the presence of her father and his partner .

Blake’s singer also gets the film’s best musical moment, when he shows Amy the band that would define her sound, exquisitely choreographed to a beat of Leader of the packfrom Shangri-La.

The trigger for his death

The film dares to insinuate this without prurience or subtlety Blake’s decision to completely rebuild his life was the sole trigger for the alcohol poisoning that caused Winehouse’s death.although Taylor-Johnson is closer to justifying the protagonist here than holding him accountable.

The only bad guys in Back to Black are the paparazzi and Amy, already in flash mode, doesn’t even express contempt for the most overwhelming situations she endures.

The film takes a stand by moving away from sensationalism and portraying Winehouse’s ailments and addictions with some subtlety, despite using a canary she carries with her as a metaphor for the singer’s fragility.

The filmmaker’s visual talent is indisputable, beyond the aforementioned rhythmic problem. T

aylor-Johnson also stands out in the shot-by-shot reconstruction of some iconic moments of the singer’s career, such as the performance of Rehab during the Grammys which marked her worldwide consecration when she had just come out of rehab.

Marisa Abela dresses up completely as Amy, singing Winehouse’s repertoire herself, and her interpretation of the iconic image of the skinny, toothless, tattooed, beehive-haired, totally stoned singer is more accomplished than adolescent innocence of that unlikely beginning centered on the dreams of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Back to black proposes a cleansing of the controversial figure of an artist who, even in the film itself, declares herself against the fading of the image and prefabricated divas.

File

Back to black

Qualification: Well

Biography. Great Britain, 2024, 122′. SAM16. Address: Sam Taylor-Johnson With: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville, Juliet Cowan and Sam Buchanan Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinépolis Recoleta, Multiplex Belgrano, Cinema Devoto