In a scene from the documentary Amy (2015) by Asif Kapadia, the father of the late neo-soul artist Amy Winehouse arrives unexpectedly on a Caribbean island where his daughter is staying after rehab, with a docu-reality film crew. Despite the fact that his daughter asked him not to come.
This scene does not appear in Back to Blackthe fiction film by filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson (in theaters May 17) inspired by the too-short life of Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 at the age of 27 from ethyl poisoning.
Asif Kapadia’s Oscar-winning documentary (Senna, Diego Maradona) blames Mitch Winehouse’s negligence in Amy’s death. The father is presented as a manipulator in search of notoriety, impervious to the dangers that await his depressed, bulimic, alcoholic and drug addict daughter.
In a scene from Back to Black, the father decides in favor of his daughter when her first manager wants to send her to rehab. “ I ain’t got the time, and if my daddy says I’m fine ” (“I don’t have time, what if my daddy says I’m fine”), Amy Winehouse sings on Rehabone of the most famous pieces from his second album, which sold 20 million copies. Except that Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film mainly presents Mitch Winehouse as a sugar daddy overwhelmed by events.
In preparation for his documentary, Asif Kapadia had access to family archives and interviewed around a hundred friends, relatives and close collaborators of Amy Winehouse. Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy, Fifty Shades of Gray) and its producer Alison Owen (the mother of singer Lily Allen) also obtained the approval of Amy Winehouse’s family. The difference between the two films? Back to Blackunlike Amydoes not seem to want to displease the Winehouse family and has all the characteristics of an authorized biography.
Like Mitch Winehouse, Blake Fielder-Civil, who despite himself inspired most of the songs on the album Back to Black, is portrayed in Asif Kapadia’s documentary as a profiteer attracted by the limelight, living off Amy. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film reminds us that Blake Fielder-Civil was the one through whom Amy Winehouse fell into an opioid spiral. But it also gives this toxic relationship – literally and figuratively – the air of a romantic comedy in which the bad boy The tender-hearted man is a victim of his alcoholic wife’s angry outbursts.
Back to Black essentially places the blame for Amy Winehouse’s decline on the turpitude of the paparazzi and her propensity for self-destruction – the singer also slipped a word about it in What Is It About Men on his first album, Frank (“My destructive side has grown a mile wide”).
Sam Taylor-Johnson has once again teamed up with author Matt Greenhalgh (Controlby Anton Corbijn, on the singer of Joy Division, Ian Curtis), who had scripted his first feature film, Nowhere Boyabout the young years of John Lennon, performed by the director’s future husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
PHOTO DEAN ROGERS, PROVIDED BY FOCUS FEATURES
Marisa Abela in Back to Black
Their film may well be titled Back to Black, it’s a romantic biography of Amy Winehouse. We have the impression that everything has been watered down and embellished: Amy’s relationship with the man of her life (and death), played by Jack O’Connell; the one with his father thirsty for recognition (Eddie Marsan); like the one with his singing grandmother (Leslie Manville), on whom a lot of emphasis is placed in an attempt to move us.
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.
PHOTO SCOTT A GARFITT, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson
The film by Sam Taylor-Johnson – known before her marriage as Sam Taylor-Wood, celebrated photographer and videographer – occasionally seems to take on the tone of a musical. Even though it was filmed on location in London’s Camden, where Amy Winehouse first performed and met her husband, it feels like a cardboard set. worthy of Singin‘ in the Rain.
The treatment is smooth, harmless and Hollywood, whereas the tragic fate of Amy Winehouse required quite the opposite. Amy composes What Is It About Men Suddenly in her teenage bedroom, she discovers Leader of the Pack Shangri-Las thanks to Blake, who pretends to sing it while dancing an improvised choreography in a bar.
Sam Taylor-Johnson portrays a caricatured Amy Whinehouse 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 off, from happy adolescence in a Jewish family inclined towards the arts, to death, only mentioned in the end credits.
When we saw Amy, by Asif Kapadia, obviously, we don’t believe it.
In theaters May 17