A lament for the singer who loved too much

Amy

15 Cert, 128 min

★★★★ ★

Dir Asif Kapadia Starring Amy Winehouse (archive footage), Mitch Winehouse, Blake Fielder, Mos Def, Mark Ronson, Nick Shymansky, Tony Bennett

Towards the end of her short life, Amy Winehouse’s last single, Love is a Losing Game, sounded like a private lament – as if you were spying on her raking the embers of a lost relationship. But in Amy, Asif Kapadia’s piercingly sad and honourable documentary about the singer’s life and death, the song seems to bounce back on its singer, turning the lament into an obituary. Even more than her sky-scraping talent, love was Amy Winehouse’s tragic flaw – love for music, her audience, her father, her husband, and the ritual of performance itself. And in Amy, you often see how that love was repaid with exploitation and betrayal. It’s a film that makes you newly angry and sad about losing Winehouse so early.

As in the director’s previous documentary about the Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, this story is told through archive footage and photographs – though often accompanied by audio interviews with her vampirish ex-husband Blake Fielder (formerly Fielder-Civil), her father Mitch, mother Janis, other family members, and assorted close friends and associates. The songs are key – and Amy makes you realise they always were. Winehouse’s music was intensely autobiographical, and whenever it plays, Kapadia runs the lyrics on screen in handwritten script, drawing attention to the many contact points between her life and art.