Is it surprising that Back to Black, director Sam Taylor-Johnson's hotly anticipated biopic of Amy Winehouse, is garnering such mixed reviews? It's currently 52% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with top film critics awarding it everything from one to four stars. Probably not – Winehouse wasn't just one of the most influential musicians of her generation, but also an incredibly complex person to capture. Asif Kapadia, director of an Oscar-winning documentary about the singer that many regard as definitive, 2015's Amy, described her as "an amazing contradiction in every way". After conducting more than 100 interviews with Winehouse's family and friends, Kapadia came to the conclusion that she was "a very shy girl who's [also] a show-off".
Warning: This article contains language that some readers may find offensive.
Taylor-Johnson's film about Winehouse, which arrives in UK cinemas this weekend before opening in the US on 17 May, is perhaps too brisk and conventional to capture all facets of the singer's stratospheric rise and desperately sad demise. A few months before she died of alcohol poisoning in July 2011, aged just 27, Winehouse had underlined her high standing in the music industry by recording a duet, a cover of the 1930s jazz standard Body and Soul, with her musical hero Tony Bennett. But Back to Black does deserve credit for reminding us that as well as being a very famous woman dealing with "demons" – a simplistic shorthand for her eating disorder, addictions and tempestuous marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil – Winehouse was thrillingly unfiltered and very funny. British actress Marisa Abela, who gamely uses her own singing voice in the film instead of lip-syncing to Winehouse's versions of signature hits including Rehab and Valerie, shows her spunky side beautifully.
In one of the film's strongest scenes, we see Winehouse arriving at her record company’s London offices in a buoyant mood. Within minutes, she's crushed by the news that her debut album, 2003's striking jazz-hip-hop hybrid Frank, won't be getting a US release. "There is strong competition from Jamie Cullum, Katie Melua and Joss Stone," an executive tells her, putting her in the same category as three other young British artists with vaguely jazzy and soulful sounds. When Winehouse leaves the meeting, she makes her feelings on this reductive comparison abundantly clear by repeating Melua's name with a judiciously chosen expletive. It's a winning moment because it feels so believable: Winehouse always had a bullish self-belief in her songwriting talent and retro-leaning musical taste.
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Back in 2004, when a TV interviewer clumsily compared her to Dido – a decidedly less edgy artist than Winehouse – she could barely hide her disdain. It's a clip so free of fakery and media-trained blandness that it's still being shared on TikTok two decades later. In another clip that has become popular on TikTok, a social media platform that wasn't launched until five years after her death, Winehouse is asked about her performance at the 2008 Brit Awards a few minutes after coming offstage. She delivers a damning verdict, then tells the presenter sweetly: "You look fit though." It's the sort of utterly genuine human interaction that few A-list artists are capable of pulling off.
Back to Black also contains an evocative recreation of an early British TV appearance in which Winehouse makes it clear that she plays the promo game on her own terms. In the film, footage of Abela-as-Winehouse is intercut with actual shots of chat show host Jonathan Ross interviewing the star in 2004. The overall tone is jovial, but Ross's questions are loaded with insinuations that wouldn't fly now. He praises her for sounding "common" because she speaks in a working-class London accent and asks whether her manager, Spice Girls impresario Simon Fuller, has tried to "mould" her in any way. Winehouse's warm but withering response shows her contempt for this suggestion. "One of them tried to mould me into a big triangle shape and I went 'noooo!'" she says with a glint in her eye.
It's this staunch commitment to being herself, warts and all, that Taylor-Johnson's film really illuminates
Winehouse's spiky sense of humour seeped into her songs, too. On Fuck Me Pumps, a salty standout from Frank, she sends up young women whose "dream in life is to be a footballer’s wife". "You don't like ballers – they don't do nothing for ya," Winehouse sings with a wink. "But you'd love a rich man six-foot-two or taller." If this sounds a little unsisterly in 2024, when we're more conscious of the heavily entrenched sexism faced by ambitious young women who cultivate a glamorous appearance, it's worth noting that Winehouse's mockery comes with a side order of respect. "Without girls like you, there'd be no fun, we'd go to the club and not see anyone," she sings on the bridge.
In the film, we also see Winehouse performing her soaring 2003 single Stronger Than Me, on which she scolds her sensitive male partner for failing to "live up to his role". Though this song contains a now-jarring slur – "feel like a lady, and you my lady boy" – its crisp wit remains bracing. "I'm not gonna meet your mother anytime – I just wanna grip your body over mine," Winehouse sings unapologetically. It's this staunch commitment to being herself, warts and all, that Taylor-Johnson's film really illuminates. Back to Black may not reveal every side of Winehouse, but it certainly shows that her staggering talent was matched by a personality destined to stand out. In the process, it offers a welcome reminder that Winehouse wasn't some kind of mythical tragic figure, but a flawed, formidable and fiercely authentic young woman.
Back to Black is out in the UK on 12 April and in the US on 17 May.
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