‘Back to Black’ Review: Marisa Abela Nails Amy Winehouse in Every Look, Mood and Note in a Biopic at Once Forthright and Forbidding
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Back to Black,” the 2006 album that the new Amy Winehouse biopic takes its title from, is a record built on an exquisite contradiction.
The music has a crispy delicious retro-bop bounce, a quality that extends to Winehouse’s vocals, which take the growling-cat stylings of jazz legends like Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and kick them up into something playfully ferocious.
Yet when you tune into the lyrics, they’re as dark as midnight. “Rehab,” the album’s showpiece track, must surely be the jauntiest song ever recorded about an addict who turns the refusal to help herself into a stance of rock ‘n’ roll defiance.
At its best, “Back to Black,” the forthright and compelling new movie that’s been made of Winehouse’s life, takes that light/dark balance and digs into the drama of it, making it sing.
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