Gold, Grunge and ‘Grace’
Three women in three very different movies demonstrate the joy and pain of singing it out in pop, punk and gospel
In Teen Spirit, Her Smell and Amazing Grace, three different women demonstrate the joy and pain of vocal expression in pop, rock and gospel.
Teen Spirit
Some singers start young, before they have a clue about how the music business can chew up their talent. Take Violet, the 17-year-old dreamer played with shy loveliness by Elle Fanning. She lives on the Isle of Wight, cleaning houses and performing in pubs. Her Polish-immigrant mother (Agnieszka Grochowska) warns her against a London TV singing competition called Teen Spirit that’s firing her up. It’s a tale as old as time — or at least American Idol — and the script follows the formula. But actor Max Minghella, making his directorial debut, has a flair for dazzling detours. He excels playing Elisabeth Moss’ forbidden love on The Handmaid’s Tale. He’s also the son of the late English Patient director, Anthony Minghella, who grew up on the Isle of Wight; the pedigree may have helped Max get the details right.
And so we see shrinking Violet alone in her room, rocking out to Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” and nailing the ache in Ellie Goulding’s “Lights” during an audition. She chooses a boozy manager, Vlad (Croatian actor Zlatko Buric), a washed-up opera singer, to help her over roadblocks like a record-exec shark (a fab Rebecca Hall).
The challenge for Fanning, 20, is to play a recessive girl who’s burning with feelings she can let out only through music. The actress, who does her own singing (minus Auto-Tuning), lets it rip for Violet’s onstage finale with Sigrid’s “Don’t Kill My Vibe.” As a would-be pop superstar, Fanning needs to be simply sensational. She is.
Her Smell
Fame knocks the hell out of Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss in a five-alarm blaze), a Nineties punk rocker whose backstage tantrums singe anyone who gets too close. Can you really commit to a movie that makes you want to bolt for the exits? You can if it’s this one.
Writer-director Alex Ross Perry divides his film into five parts over a decade. It starts when Becky and her bandmates — Marielle (Agyness Deyn) and Ali (Gayle Rankin) — rock the house at a club called Her Smell, then head backstage to have Becky bite their heads off. They’re not alone. The chief of her record label (Eric Stoltz) is not spared her ire. Neither is her ex-husband (Dan Stevens), who now cares for the baby daughter Becky can hardly bear to look at.
As the film moves on to a record studio where the washed-up singer co-opts a younger riot-grrrl band out of jealousy, the whole thing seems ready to implode. That it doesn’t is due to Moss, whose open wound of a performance is tempered near the end when she croons Bryan Adams’ “Heaven” to her daughter with a tenderness tinged with hope. She takes a character who makes Courtney Love look like Mother Teresa and exposes the humanity that once vitalized and defined her music. The effect is shattering.
Amazing Grace
In January 1972, Aretha Franklin got up to sing gospel at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, backed by the Southern California Community Choir. And then a miracle happened. Amazing Grace doesn’t have a plot — just a voice touched by God. It took so long to release this indispensable gift because director Sydney Pollack failed to properly synchronize image and sound. Digital experts have since made it possible to experience Aretha, who died last year, in all her thrilling glory. How sweet the sound.