This shoddy, insulting portrayal of Amy makes Blake a saint and leaves me gasping in horror

BEFORE we even get to the deep moral and ethical problems, Back to Black is, on the most basic of levels, a poor piece of filmmaking.

- Hamish MacBain

The schtick being rolled out is that it is an impressionistic, abstract take on the life of Amy Winehouse based on her lyrics. But while it may offer up endless GCSE symbolism, it looks, feels and sounds like all the dress-up box biopics it thinks it is artistically superior to.

Sam Taylor-Johnson clearly considers herself far too much of an auteur to use any of the music film tropes. Which is fine with me: I never want to see another montage cutting between increasingly bigger/more ecstatic crowds and rocketing album sales. But instead of a clever alternative, Back to Black simply doesn't bother to establish just how quickly Winehouse became as famous as she did. Or why.

She just suddenly has swarms of paparazzi camped outside her house and is, having split up with Blake Fielder-Civil, smoking a crack pipe. Just 10 minutes earlier, her record label were telling her they weren't going to bother releasing her debut album in the US due to its poor domestic sales and she was chastising Blake for snorting cocaine.

Anyone coming to this film without prior knowledge of Amy's story would