Back to Black review: A compelling portrait of Amy Winehouse, a brilliant woman who was often her own worst enemy

With Back to Black, the regrettable trend of reviewing films sight unseen reaches new and ludicrous heights.

After a trailer was released two months back, online geniuses piled on the negativity, accusing the film of everything but murder: making a biopic so soon after Amy Winehouse’s death was pointless, and exploitative; Marisa Abela didn’t look like the singer, or sound like her either; and rumours spread that Amy’s dad Mitch had been sympathetically portrayed because he was involved in the production. He was not.

Back to Black Official Trailer

Well, we know how all the people who haven’t seen this film feel about it, but what is it actually like to watch?

Pretty good, in fact, because Sam Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh have studiously avoided the cardinal sin of approaching a person’s life with the benefit of hindsight.

After a slightly creaky start, in which Amy’s North London, working-class, Jewish credentials are established in ‘cor, blimey!’ EastEnders fashion, we’re given insights into her teenage life.

There were lots of musicians and singers in her family, and Amy’s talent was vigorously encouraged by her beloved grandmother, Cynthia (Lesley Manville), a jazz-lover through and through who’d sung at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1960s and worn a beehive.

By age 14, Amy was writing her own songs and belting them out at family gatherings. She perfected her unique vocal style by practising songs by Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

In 2002, her friend and fellow musician Tyler James sent a demo to an A&R man: by the time she was 19, Amy had a record deal.

If her talent was obvious, so was her frailty. Amy’s parents had separated when she was nine: self-harm would later become a problem, she may have had an undiagnosed mental illness, was almost certainly bulimic, and then there was the addiction.

In Taylor-Johnson’s film, we at least get to see Amy’s explosion into the public consciousness courtesy of early songs like Frank and Stronger Than Me, before everything goes crazy with the release of the multi-Grammy-winning album Back to Black.

Unfortunately, many of its wonderful songs were inspired by her toxic relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil.

Played with commendable subtlety by Jack O’Connell, Fielder-Civil is a jovial and charismatic drug addict who would later boast that he introduced Amy to heroin and crack cocaine

Played with commendable subtlety by Jack O’Connell, Fielder-Civil is a jovial and charismatic drug addict who would later boast that he introduced Amy to heroin and crack cocaine.

Their first meeting is perhaps the film’s best scene: Amy is knocking back the shots in a Camden Town pub when Fielder-Civil rocks in flashing the cash and crowing about his wins on the ponies.

He’s self-aware, a smooth mover and as Amy stares at him entranced, you feel like shouting “run away, run away!”.

But, as Sam Taylor-Johnson has stated, Blake is no straightforward villain: Winehouse would probably have had addiction problems without him, and their Sid-and-Nancy dynamic was only one aspect of her psychodrama.

In Asif Kapadia’s brilliant 2015 documentary Amy, Mitch WInehouse (played here by an altogether too lovable Eddie Marsan) was portrayed as a bullish and intrusive figure who advised her not to go into rehab at a time when it might have made a big difference.

She did go in eventually, and had been sober for a long time before she relapsed. She died from alcohol poisoning at her London home on July 23, 2011. She was 27.

Her treatment by the paparazzi was the most sickening spectacle of all. In the film, they crowd around her like vultures when she slips and falls on her way out of an off-licence — a handy metaphor for their wider behaviour.

And Amy’s drinking, drug-use, love of tattoos and appetite for a fight might have been viewed very differently had she not been female. Her brash style and Cockney accent really brought out the snob in Fleet Street.

Back to Black resists pathos, and operatic flourishes, and seems like a genuine attempt to paint Amy not as a doomed heroine, but a person — and a pretty extraordinary one at that.

No other singer is ever going to sound like her, but I think Marisa Abela does a really good job with the songs for the most part, and gives a compelling portrait of a brilliant woman who was often her own worst enemy.

Rating: Four stars

Back to Black is in cinemas only from Friday, April 12