Style: Musical Biography
Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson
Starring: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville
Working Time: 122 minutes
Synopsis: In London, teenager Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) comes from a modest working class household and is blessed with a throwback singing voice. She has a detailed relationship along with her grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville), whereas her taxi driver father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) fancies himself a crooner. Amy is extra into jazz and writes emotional songs impressed by her addictions to males, booze, weed, and bulimia. On the cusp of success, Amy takes a break from music and falls right into a turbulent relationship with unhealthy boy Blake (Jack O’Connell), offering the inspiration to write down songs for her subsequent album, Again To Black.
What Works Effectively: This impressionistic portrait of a troubled artist succeeds in capturing the fountain of artistry on the intersection of expertise, ardour, setting, and character. Author Matt Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Johnson preserve an intense deal with Amy, permitting her to personal her success as an uncompromising anachronistic revivalist of jazz music and Nineteen Sixties glamour, and simply as totally embrace all of the fault strains of her tragedy: attraction to unhealthy boys, substance abuse, and a depraved mood. With the musical highlights seamlessly weaving by the narrative, Marisa Abela does her personal singing and embodies Amy in a hauntingly sincere efficiency punctuated by searing line deliveries. The recreation of early 2000s London fashions provides natural texture.
What Does Not Work As Effectively: Among the jumps in time and place are uncoordinated, leaving a couple of aspect characters (together with Amy’s mom and a roommate) stranded. The working time is barely padded, however the origins of Amy’s demonic addictions deserved extra consideration.
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