Breathing life into the story of a doomed diva

• Published date: 12 April 2024
• Author: BACK TO BLACK HHH
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Too many people who haven’t seen Back to Black have already decided this is a career-killing disaster. Blame some ropey trailers, the genre’s unhappy history and sincere concerns about the tastefulness of such a project. Back to Black certainly entertains a few of the cliches satirised in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Yes, before that rehab scene we do see her work out relationship concerns through spontaneous composition on a nearby guitar. But there is real grit to the performances and a fruitful desire to anatomise a relationship that brought so much grief

Everyone who buys a ticket will probably already know the Winehouse story: a Jewish kid from Camden Town honed her skills belting out jazz classics before securing an unlikely deal with Simon Fuller’s 19 Management. (The “I ain’t no Spice Girl” line that generated derision in the trailer makes sense in that context.) Two hit albums followed.

The film is rooted largely in the singer’s north London manor. Taylor-Johnson, who examined the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy, draws a gorgeous performance from...