Director Sam Taylor-Johnson was keen to get approval from Amy Winehouse’s family before making a feature film about her life. We are not surprised, so much Back to Black has the characteristics of an authorized biography.
The father of the late singer, Mitch Winehouse, is presented as a sugar daddy overwhelmed by events, while many believe that he did not adequately protect his daughter. Blake Fielder-Civil, who despite himself inspired most of the songs on the album Back to Black, caused the prodigious Amy to fall into drugs. The film gives their toxic relationship – literally and figuratively – the air of a romantic comedy.
Jack O’Connell plays this bad boy tender-hearted, portrayed as a victim of his alcoholic wife’s outbursts of anger. Back to Black essentially places the blame for Amy Winehouse’s decline on the turpitude of the paparazzi and the singer’s propensity for self-destruction. Marisa Abela is quite convincing as Amy Winehouse, in her intensity as in her cockney accent (it is the young actress’ brassy voice that we hear in the songs performed on screen); although physically, she looks more like Britney Spears.
Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (Nowhere Boy) offer a romantic filmed biography of Amy Winehouse. It feels like everything has been watered down and embellished: Amy’s relationship with Blake; the one with his father thirsty for recognition (Eddie Marsan); like the one with his singer grandmother (Leslie Manville), which we count on in order to arouse emotion.
Back to Black occasionally seems to borrow the tone of a musical comedy. Although it was filmed on location in London’s Camden, where Amy Winehouse first performed and met her husband, the film feels like a cardboard set. dough worthy of Singin‘ in the Rain. His treatment is smooth, inoffensive and Hollywood, while the tragic fate of Amy Winehouse required quite the opposite. We don’t recognize the tormented teenager who listened to Sarah Vaughn, read Charles Bukowski and sang in London bars before signing her first record contract at 19.
Sam Taylor-Johnson portrays a caricatured Amy Winehouse, who never transcends commonplaces. His short life thus condensed resembles a generic soap novel by a famous artist. A Wikipedia page made into a film whose sharp edges would have been rounded, from happy adolescence in a Jewish family inclined to the arts, to death, only mentioned in the end credits. Unfortunately, we don’t believe it.
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Biographical drama
Back to Black
Sam Taylor-Johnson
With Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Leslie Manville
2:02 a.m.