Origin-itis, the most irritating habits of biopics, is one of the problems that blights Sam Taylor-Johnson’s genuine effort to honour Amy Winehouse’s (Marisa Abela) life and music. From that trademark beehive to the lyrics to ‘Stronger’, everything in Back to Black gets its own origin story – usually spelled out and double underlined in case you missed it. Not all of these vignettes are duds – Amy’s meet-cute with Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O’Connell, excellent) over pints and pool in a Camden boozer is genuinely terrific – but they don’t make a script that already feels soft-soaped to get the Winehouse’s estate’s approval, feel any less pedestrian.
Abela does solidly with the impossible task of capturing this unique woman’s voice and spirit, but how to tackle Winehouse’s tragic, booze-and-drugs-fuelled death without it feel exploitative? For screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh, who did such an affecting job reprising Joy Division singer Ian Curtis’s life and death in Control (2007), the answer is to swerve it altogether via a weirdly abrupt ending. When the film was announced, Twitter threw a collective fit. Turns out Twitter isn’t always wrong.
In UK cinemas Fri Apr 12. In US theaters May 17.
