Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Stars: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s already controversial biopic of late singer Amy Whitehouse (the director’s second Brit biopic after Lennon picture 2009’s ‘Nowhere Boy’) more or less succeeds despite some flaws and an extended running time.

It starts like fairly standard biopic fare as the adolescent Amy (Abela) is shown interrupting a trad Jewish singalong at her mum’s house to dazzle friends and relatives with a scintillating version of standard ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ in which she is joined by her wannabe singer dad Mitch (Marsan). Amy’s closest confidante it is revealed is her nan (Manville) a former ’50s nightclub singer with a penchant for leopard skin and big hair.

After a gig at Camden’s Dublin Castle and a warmly received demo, she is offered a contract with entrepreneur and manager Simon Fuller’s 19 Management team. Amy initially resists insisting that she is no malleable Spice Girl. Nevertheless, she eventually signs up and records her first album ‘Frank’ which, while a critical success, does not make the top ten.

Then, in the film’s best and nicely measured scene, Amy meets seemingly carefree charmer Blake Fielder-Civil (O’Connell) in Britpop pub The Good Mixer rendered suitably scuzzy by production designer Sarah Greenwood.  A romance looks on the cards, but as well as displaying a worrying enthusiasm for hard drugs, Blake has a girlfriend.

Amy’s second album ‘Back to Black’, makes her an international super star and multiple awards follow. She is reunited with Blake, and they get married in Miami. But after her husband is jailed for drug charges and Winehouse becomes an endless source of interest for the paparazzi, the singer becomes unstuck.

As is the case with biopics, some of the dialogue can be a little too on-the-nose and exposition heavy, and Taylor Wood deploys some hackneyed imagery of caged birds and foxes to suggest the singer’s plight.

Abela is great though, very good at conveying Amy’s youth and precocious talent (if not quite the singer’s spikiness) and she does a pretty good job of replicating Winehouse’s singing voice, particularly a rousing version of ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’. O’Connell steals the show as toxic geezer Blake, although this broadly positive and undeniably charming representation, which seems to be contradicted by actual events, is liable to be controversial, as is the film’s treatment of Winehouse’s dad Mitch.

Taylor-Johnson keeps the action moving along briskly enough, but Amy’s inevitable descent is, inevitably, very gruelling.

Back to Black is released 12th April

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm