Noted in 2011 for Senna, portrait of the racing driver Ayrton Senna who died at the age of 34 in May 1994 at the wheel of his Williams-Renault at the San Marino Grand Prix, on the Imola circuit, the English documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia is recovering from a in a way his work on the profession by attacking the singer Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011, at the age of 27.
Despite the undeniable talent of the director, which applies to both films, it will not escape anyone that the second seems to want to repeat the recipes that made the first successful. Same tropism towards the precociously struck down star, same taste for patiently unearthed archive images, same dexterity in organizing a story that is both sensitive and sensational from this material.
If Asif Kapadia were to triple the stakes, he would probably risk being singled out for the brilliant morbidity of his subjects. In the meantime, all those who loved Amy Winehouse, who admired her talent, who were captivated by her angry voice, who tasted her vital intensity and who were, ultimately, overwhelmed by her tragic destiny, can and must see this film. Less for the story, unfortunately very predictable, that the film tells us (birth, assumption, decline and fall of a rockstar), than for the richness of the material which nourishes it, no less than the fluidity of its arrangement.
The boyfriend and the father
Refusing the traditional path of the documentary as an assembly of “talking heads”, Kapadia has made a film which gives the illusion of avoiding reconstitution and mediation, and of being in direct contact with life, and consequently with death. of the character.
To do this, he used numerous images from unpublished archives, particularly private ones, only selected live recordings in terms of music, and confined the multiple testimonies (from relatives, collaborators, friends) which nourish the narration, many of them unfilmed moreover, only on the soundtrack.
What emerges is a total film, which embraces the question both aesthetically and biographically, and relentlessly pursues the insoluble question of the death of a very young woman so gifted and successful, but carrying a suffering which no one will have the last word. In this regard, we can wonder if the film is right to so continuously question the two men who were its closest loved ones at the same time as its evil geniuses.
It is Blake Fielder, the singer’s boyfriend, who introduces her to drugs then blows on the embers when the house burns. And of Mitch Winehouse, long absent father, long missing father, then suddenly hyperpresent, interfering in the management of his daughter’s career when fame is there. Arguing the support he would have provided even late to his daughter, the man contested, including through legal means, this interpretation which he considers fallacious of his role.
Who will tell the ultimate truth of this matter? Refusing the unenviable role of the arbiter, the spectator will be more surely touched by the immense feeling of waste and loss aroused by the death of this young singer.
