“Love Is a Losing Game”: I review an Amy Winehouse documentary

for AmCon:

It’s impossible to describe Amy Winehouse’s voice. Crackly, crimson, fractured and sultry: That’s just the scratchy surface. “Amy,” the new documentary from director Asif Kapadia, delves into the jazz chanteuse’s troubled life and early death, but never forgets to show us Winehouse’s talent and craft—and her gentleness.

“Amy” plays like a defense brief. There are villains: Winehouse’s father Mitchell, her husband Blake, and the paparazzi. The movie takes Winehouse’s own narrative at face value, and it’s a starkly old-fashioned one: When my father left our family I lost my compass. I need someone to stop me from hurting myself. I need my daddy. Winehouse’s first big hit had her upbraiding her man with, “You should be stronger than me!”, and that search for a man to be her strength continues throughout the version of her life we see here. If this movie were a slogan it would be, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs water.”

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