Fearless singer gets timid biopic

Marisa Abela nails look and sound of Amy Winehouse, but nothing can overcome the film's deficiencies

- PETER HOWELL

British actor Marisa Abela isn’t an exact double of Amy Winehouse, but she absolutely nails her soulful singing and Motown-meets rockabilly retro look in “Back to Black,” writes Peter Howell.

Back to Black 

Starring Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville and Juliet Cowan. Written by Matt Greenhalgh. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. Opens Friday in Toronto theatres, with some Thursday previews. 123 minutes. 14A 

“There’s no point in saying anything but the truth,” the late British pop sensation Amy Winehouse once told an interviewer, expressing her fearless attitude about her life and songs.

Winehouse, who succumbed to alcohol poisoning at age 27 in 2011, was never one to mince words, in either her soulful lyrics or her public confessions. She didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve, in songs like “Rehab” and “Love Is a Losing Game”; she figuratively tore it out of her chest and spiked it on her microphone stand for all to see.

She was the opposite, in other words, of the timid new biopic “Back to Black,” titled for another Winehouse cry of pain. Starring Marisa Abela in what might prove a breakout role for the young British actor, it’s directed by Sam TaylorJohnson, who began her feature filmmaking career in 2009 with “Nowhere Boy,” a biopic about John Lennon’s early years.