When a biopic of a troubled star is endorsed by their family what we end up with on screen never really tells us the whole truth about the life of the subject. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022) is a good example of how, in trying not to offend anyone, a film ends up telling us nothing that we didn’t already know prior to purchasing our cinema ticket.
Sadly Back to Black, a biographical film of singer Amy Winehouse who died aged 27 in 2011, falls very much into that category.
Enjoyable certainly so but shockingly informative in its revelations, certainly not.
Marisa Abela (who sings Winehouse’s songs) is terrific in the lead role and is probably the one reason to see Back to Black.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson whisks us through Winehouse’s personal and professional life at such break neck speed it’s hard to see how her fame and eventual fall came about. Her bulimia, drug and alcohol abuse and the loss of her gran (Lesley Manville) all appear to contribute, in a way that’s never fully explained, to her downward spiral.
From her infatuation with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell playing him like a buffed up Derek Trotter from TV’s Only Fools And Horses) to her relationship with her father Mitch (Eddie Marson giving a performance that would give the impression that he was the father of the year) all the characters, who in some way or another, were complicit in Winehouse’s state of mind, all feel like watered down versions of themselves.
Much like the aforementioned Whitney Huston biopic Back to Black is all about the music and in that it doesn’t disappoint. Just enjoy the music and Marisa Abela’s terrific performance and don’t go expecting any earth shattering revelations about the singer’s life because you won’t get it.