Jaecoo might introduce the coolest little EV here
The Chinese brand hasn’t even launched in New Zealand yet and it’s eyeing up some seriously cool machinery for next year, writes Nile Bijoux.
Omoda isn’t the only subsidiary from Chery launching in New Zealand. Sister brand Jaecoo is on its way, with the J7 SUV due to touch down this year before the J8 arrives in early 2025. But it’s not waiting around, dropping a heavy hint the next model will be the funky J6.
Stuff is in China with Omoda/Jaecoo, and spotted the J6 waiting outside a hotel in Wuhu, where the brands are headquartered.
The key giveaway that this is an international model is the badge on the nose – locally, these are sold as the iCar 03, with the Jaecoo badge reserved for overseas markets.
We asked the local boss, Sheldon Humphries, about the car and while he wouldn’t confirm anything specific, he coyly mentioned that whatever the next Jaecoo model might be wouldn’t arrive until after the J7, meaning mid- to late-2025 at the earliest.
The J6 is a compact SUV, slightly smaller than a Toyota Corolla in width and length but a bit taller. In China it is sold in reardrive and all-wheel-drive trims, the former using a single motor to generate 137kW and the latter two motors for a total of 208kW.
Range is a claimed 500km from a CATLproduced 69.8kWh battery, but that’s probably on the more generous China Light Vehicle Test Cycle.
It mimics the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y approach with a highly minimal interior, leaving all the controls to the central touchscreen and buttons on the steering wheel. Rear storage is apparently limited, so the back door has a storage box mounted on it.
Of course, major details like price are still to be confirmed. But it’s encouraging to see brands like Jaecoo consider New Zealand more, with genuinely interesting vehicles. I mean, a four-wheel-drive EV that looks like this? The world needs a bit more fun.
Back to Black (R13, 122 mins) Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett **½
There has already been a very good documentary made from what we know of Amy Winehouse’s life. It was simply called Amy – and it was released in 2015. Film-maker Asif Kapadia – who had made Senna in 2010 – conducted more than 100 interviews and had access to a massive amount of archival material, much of which hadn’t been seen, or heard, before.
So, a fictionalised biopic seems unnecessary. But, with Amy’s music still making money for someone, I guess a film like Back to Black was nearly inevitable.
Back to Black lays out a simplified time-line of the years between Amy’s first brush with fame and her death in 2011. We see Amy and her friend Nick Shymansky agree to send a tape to a London talent agent. A bidding war ends with EMI and Island Records both having an interest in her career.
Amy’s debut album Frank was released in 2003, a month after her 19th birthday. It propelled her from being a well-known presence around the local jazz clubs and pubs, to actual global fame.
Back to Black portrays Amy as a bit of a lost soul, swinging between her mum and her dad’s houses, always singing, but often drinking and landing flat on her arse on various North London footpaths too. She meets a charmer named Blake Fielder Civil one afternoon over a game of pool and they fall for each other. Blake breaks Amy’s heart, but not before introducing her to Class A drugs.
The release of Amy’s second album – the one this film takes its name from – would make her a superstar. But the drink and drugs, the hounding by the paparazzi, the loss of her beloved nan and the heartbreak over Blake have washed Amy’s foundations away. One night, after a lengthy period of near sobriety, Amy heads home with a shopping bag full of off-licence vodka and dies alone.
It’s an efficient road-map of a life, I guess, that clunkily tries to solve the biopic writer’s eternal problem of making an actual human life conform to the rigid three-act architecture a movie demands.
Director Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy) is no fool and she makes the best of the material she has. The script, from Matt Greenhalgh, falls into the near-unavoidable biopic trap of having people who have known each other their whole lives, talking as though they have just met.
But after a while, when the main players are all on stage and the story is in motion, the writing settles down into something more naturalistic, and a few of the performances start to shine.
Jack O’Connell as Blake and Eddie Marsan as Amy’s dad Mitch are both very good, although noticeably more sympathetic than the men the documentary showed us in 2015. The great Leslie Manville is the heart and soul of the film’s early scenes, as Amy's beloved nan and confidant Cynthia.
The star here – of course – is Marisa Abela as Amy. Abela has a lead role in the British TV drama Industry, but is mostly unknown to movie audiences. If Back to Black achieves anything, it will be to launch Abela as a bona-fide movie actor. Unless this film implodes at the box-office, we will see her name attached to some major projects in the next year or two.
Calling Back to Black a bad film would be asinine. It is well-made, often sounds fantastic and there are a couple of performances which are a pleasure to watch.
But, I still loathed this film for what it doesn’t show us. Back to Black mostly misses the creativity and the absolute perfectionism of Amy at her best. Her drive, musicality and work ethic were legendary, especially in the earlier years.
Only once in this film do we see Amy – pre-fame – actually work on a song, the rest of them appearing as if by magic when she opened her mouth to sing. This is lazy nonsense that no biopic of a male performer would dare try to pass off.
Maybe the best I can hope for Back to Black is that it drives a few more people to listen to Amy’s music and to watch Asif Kapadia’s documentary (available to rent from iTunes).
The 2015 Amy is the sprawling, heartbreaking and jaw-dropping film her life demands. Back to Black is not.
Back to Black is in cinemas nationwide.