Holiday spirit: Andra Day channels tragic diva Billie Holiday but can’t rescue messy biopic
THE UNITED STATES VS BILLIE HOLIDAY (15) SUPERB ANDRA DAY CHANNELS TRAGIC DIVA BILLIE, BUT CAN’T RESCUE THIS MESSY BIOPIC
AFEROCIOUS, uncompromising lead performance from Grammy-nominated R&B star Andra Day, making her feature film debut, almost redeems director Lee Daniels’ scattershot biopic of trailblazing singer Billie Holiday.
Based on the book Chasing The Scream by journalist Johann Hari, Suzan-Lori Parks’ script employs a cumbersome framing device to ricochet through 12 years of emotional upheaval, which culminated in Holiday’s arrest for drug possession as she lay dying in the Metropolitan Hospital in New York.
In 1957, Holiday (Day) chats with columnist Reginald Lord Devine (Leslie Jordan). They discuss her song Strange Fruit, which rages against the lynch- ing of black Americans and is described by one government agent as “a musical starting gun for this so-called civil rights movement”.
She also recounts her longrunning feud with Harry J Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund), head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
The singer harks back 10 years to her performances at New York nightclub Cafe Society – motto: “The wrong place for the right people” – where she is introduced to admirer Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes).
The handsome former GI has been secretly hired by Anslinger to infiltrate her inner circle and Jimmy plays a pivotal role in Billie’s one-year prison sentence for heroin possession.
The FBI mole regrets his actions and becomes her protector alongside confidantes Roslyn (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Miss Freddy (Miss Lawrence).
Alas, Billie cannot escape the vice-like grip of drug addiction and she rebuffs Jimmy to spare him a one-way ticket down the road to hell: “Gotta find you a nice girl, and that ain’t me.”
Colour bleeds into monochrome and back again as Daniels uses archive footage from the era, which packs a heftier emotional punch than
anything he evokes.
Day is a woman possessed, shedding clothes and inhibitions to explore Holiday’s courage and her self-destructive tendencies.
Her renditions of the jazz legend’s hits are delivered with piercing clarity, soaked in pain.
Trevante Rhodes is shortchanged as the FBI agent, who spies on Holiday then becomes her lover. The complex psychology of their odd romance never comes into focus.
What results is a glittering showcase for Day but, as a coherent and compelling portrait of flawed musical genius, Daniels’ picture is off-key.
Chronology is muddy and there is a frustrating lack of clarity to on screen relationships. The musical sequences are dazzling, with the singer giving all of herself to the performance, but sadly everything else that’s on show here comes up regrettably short.