Review of Amy (2015) by Ana B — 30 Nov 2015

A documentary about the troubled life of famous singer and icon Amy Winehouse and the tragedy of her early death due to alcohol poisoning. The film lightly brushes her infancy and her teen years: her parents divorce, her depression and her first contact with bulimia. Instead it concentrates in her more documented final years, it gives a more detailed in depth insight into her career as a singer and songwriter. Each of her famous songs are shown in the screen while we get a glimpse of why she wrote them and what inspired her, almost like the chapters of a book we pass the pages of her life mixed with the sound of her voice and her music, in between the lines of the lyrics we get to see the bulimia, the stormy relationships, the drug addiction, the marriage break up, the badly dealt celebrity status...

There is previously unseen footage and recorded voice messages, they are like brushstrokes in this portrait of one of the most famous raw talents of British music, a picture of an unstable mind and an avoidable early grave.

To me the best of the film is that it gives different perspectives, there are comments of her manager, her friends, her high school mates, her parents, her ex-husband... giving us a rounded professional and personal image. Its strenght is also its weak point as at the end you don't get an strong impression of anything in particular.

It was directed by Asif Kapadia, the one that did "Senna" a biographical documentary about the Brazilian F1 pilot , also worthwhile watching.