BACK TO BLACK

This sad though beautiful film conveys Amy’s tenderness and most importantly her youth which is really at odds with the tough image and mature voice that we read about in Amy’s other bio-pics.

Marisa Abel as Amy is thoroughly engaging and sweet natured with her rough edges being well concealed. She nails Amy Winehouse in every look, utterance and musical expression.

At the start of the film we are introduced to Amy who is a Jewish teenager from the Camden district of London and who is really devoted to her Nan( Lesley Manville) a former 50’s nightclub singer from whom she ultimately learns to do the pouffy period hairdo.

The film opens in 2002, when she is already an up and coming sensation in the London nightclub scene. At a get together of relatives in the home of her doting father Mitch(Eddie Marsen) Amy teams up for a living room duet on “ Fly me to the moon” and we experience her brilliance as a singer.

Although Amy professes not to be a feminist because she likes boys too much, the reality is that she is really the incarnation of a new brand of womanly assertion in that she does whatever she really wants – she is drawn to extremes of hedonistic self expression, whether it is in the amount of alcohol she consumes, the tattoos she gets on a whim or the fearless emulation of her jazz heroines.

Even though Amy manager tells her to stop playing the guitar, Amy does not listen and insists that her mission is to write music .

This film is a dramatised telling of the doomed love story between Winehouse and her ex- husband Blake Fielder-Civil ( Jack O’ Connell) relegating much of Winehouse’s persona and career to the background. It is during an off moment in their turbulent drug fuelled sometimes violent on and off relationship that Winehouse creates her second and final record – the masterful album that would catapult her to international levels of fame and critical acclaim that she thought she would never achieve and definitely could not handle.

All in all, I feel the film was beautifully presented without an emphasis on the darker parts of Amy’s life which would have made for rather sad viewing.

This film is a dramatised telling of the doomed love story between Winehouse and her ex- husband Blake Fielder-Civil ( Jack O’ Connell) relegating much of Winehouse’s persona and career to the background. It is during an off moment in their turbulent drug fuelled sometimes violent on and off relationship that Winehouse creates her second and final record – the masterful album that would catapult her to international levels of fame and critical acclaim that she thought she would never achieve and definitely could not handle.

All in all, I feel the film was beautifully presented without an emphasis on the darker parts of Amy’s life which would have made for rather sad viewing.

Scroll to Top