Back to Black review: Marisa Abela is fantastic
Review Overview
Cast
8Consistency
3Ivan Radford | On 02, Jun 2024
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Leslie Manville
Certificate: 15
How on earth do you do justice to a unique musical talent, let alone one whose life was plagued by tragedy, scrutiny and exploitation? In the case of Amy Winehouse, Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy was a masterclass. Back to Black, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic, strives to be its own interpretation of the singer’s life, but feels more like a misjudged cover version than a respectful remix.
The film, penned by Matt Greenhalgh, gives us a whistle-stop tour of Amy’s rise to success, as she signs with Island Records and releases Frank, her debut album. When the record label hesitate over trying to break America with the album, she takes time out from her career and winds up bumping into Blake Fielder-Civil in The Good Mixer, a pub in Camden. Blake, played by Jack O’Connell, will go on to inspire her second album, Back to Black – a whirlwind of trauma and heartbreak that needs little introduction to anyone who has listened to music in the past 20 years.
Of course, that’s the challenge facing Back to Black: when someone’s story is as well known as Amy’s, which bits do you recount and which bits do you leave out? Greenhalgh’s screenplay, which is crucially written with the endorsement of Winehouse’s family, doesn’t come up with a satisfying answer. Amy’s dad, Mitch (a superb Eddie Marsan), who came off poorly in Kapadia’s non-fiction film, is notably portrayed here as a loving, well-meaning father figure. While the truth is undoubtably more nuanced than 2015’s Amy might suggest, this version of events goes too far in the other direction, with a disappointing lack of detail or darkness to a complicated relationship.
Instead, the film chooses to focus on Amy and Blake’s relationship, and the impact it had upon her – both in terms of sobriety and creativity. That positioning of emphasis pushes most other people in Amy’s life, including her friends and mother (an underserved Lesley Manville), to the sidelines. That, frustratingly, reduces the narrative to the point where we also don’t get to see Amy in action as an artist or musician – her ideas and songwriting process are kept off-screen, as we instead get a clutch of music performances without much substance to her potted, unexplained career timeline.
Fortunately, the film has a key weapon in its arsenal: the phenomenal Marisa Abela (HBO’s Industry), who steps into Amy’s shoes with confidence and commitment. She not only does an uncannily impressive job of recreating Winehouse’s unique vocals, but she also invests her with a palpable and heartfelt sincerity. She swings from girlish excitement to despair with a dizzy immediacy, making this portrayal of Amy feel vivid and alive whether she’s singing in a club or teetering off the stage at Glastonbury.
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s direction starts out clean and conventional before venturing down a shadowy, expressive rabbit hole the more Amy’s problems stack up, but there’s a relatively neat feel to the overall portrait of an artist whose life was tinged with such darkness. On the plus side, that gives us the opportunity to embrace the romance that also defined Amy’s story – we swoon as Amy and Blake first meet, innocuously playing pool while he mimes along to the jukebox. The duo capture the heady rush and joy of attraction with a fizzing chemistry, before red flags start to appear.
Like Marsan, Connell has a natural charisma that leaves us feeling surprisingly sympathetic for the roguish, rebellious Blake, even as we ask questions about the script’s portrayal of him. In that sense, this is a more forgiving film than many might expect, seeing the humans behind the news headlines that exploited a music star who died far too young. Whether that leads you to similar feelings towards the film as a whole is an interesting question in itself.