Abela: Amy Winehouse was 'so cool to me'

(14 May 2024)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Marisa Abela, actor:
"I didn't see any, like, cool women out there rocking the Star of David and then like, Amy Winehouse is out and about and that was just so cool to me. I was like, 'oh, you can be like, hot and Jewish.' I don't know, is that awful? But I was like, 'oh, that's kind of amazing,' and then also getting to learn more about her family dynamics, having her grandmother like, you know, the women in her family and also what these Friday night dinners in North London would have looked like for her. My mom's family are all from North London. It's a very specific way that people communicate, you know, and like, the jokes that are passed on. Like, I understood a little language that she would have used often. I would watch interviews with her and she'd use certain words and I, you know, Yiddish words and, I would feel a kind of kinship in those moments."
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[@user-go8oy6jy1u]

This film feels like a cheap telenovela that revolves solely around one aspect of Amy's life - her love for Blake Fielder-Civil.
However, I expect a musician biopic to tell me the development of the artist and their music. Amy Winehouse was funny, highly intelligent, brutally honest and, especially at an early age, a self-confident young woman who developed her own style and musical style. With Back to Black she achieved the fame she never wanted, and which was later responsible for her death, among other things. As a fan, you were horrified to see how her bulimia, the press, her drug and alcohol addiction and an environment that did not protect her but continued to exploit her (Mitch, her father, Raye Cosbert, her manager, Blake Fielder-Civil, her (Ex )-husband), drove her to her death.
Amy Winehouse had a complicated personality that the film doesn't do justice to. Here Amy is shown as a self-absorbed and aggressive woman who doesn't evoke any sympathy from me. All of the characters are extremely one-dimensional; most of them don't even have any external resemblance to the living people. Except Mitch Winehouse, who in the film, unlike in real life, is always at her side. Marisa really tries to make the most of the role, but at no point did I buy Amy from her. Her vocal performance is also passable, it's a good thing Amy's music wasn't used, it would have been sacrilege. Important stages in Amy's life are simply left out (the recordings with Mark Ronson in New York of Back to Black - after all, the title of the film) or the Dap-Kings (her backing band in the USA). When she receives the Grammys, her acceptance speech simply omits her words: for my Blake, who is in jail.
And so it goes on, it's twisted, times are changed, important events are misrepresented, e.g. it wasn't Blake who brought her to the girl groups, but Amy discovered her on her own, as did the iconic Beehive that came from her, and not, as in Portrayed in the film by her grandmother Cynthia. Blake's arrest took place in a different apartment, etc. Add to that the countless mistakes in the clothing and shoes, it all just seems cheap.
The biggest outrage occurs at the end of the film: Amy had written Back to Black about Blake when he left her and she slipped into depression. Here it is presented as if the song had to do with her grandmother's death! The entire film shows how little respect or knowledge the producers have for Amy and her music. I can only recommend Asif Kapadia's film: Amy - The Girl behind the Name to everyone, which showed Amy as she was. There are also many good concerts of hers on RUclips such as the North Sea Jazz Festival (2004) or Dingle (2006).

[@froglynx]

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