Review | 'Back to Black' whitewashes a mercurial supernova of a star

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Why do we even watch biopics?

They made sense back in the early days of Hollywood, when telling the story of a Louis Pasteur or a Vincent van Gogh was a visual window onto a life and a history you couldn't experience otherwise. But a film biography of an entertainer whose image and life are already baked into the culture seems a perverse undertaking. And yet we go — to see Sissy Spacek play Loretta Lynn, Rami Malek play Freddie Mercury, Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland, Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. Oscar winners and nominees all.

Do we go for the transformation of one star into another? For the hits? For a glimpse beneath the glitz of persona for the grit of the actual person?

This is a roundabout way of asking why "Back to Black," a.k.a. the Amy Winehouse Story, falls so flat and feels so canned.

The movie stars a relative unknown, Marisa Abela, as Winehouse, so a built-in star curiosity isn't there, but the same was true of Austin Butler, and no one had a problem with "Elvis." (Well, they did, but for other reasons.) Abela gives a passionate performance, and that's actually her singing voice on the soundtrack, willed into a startling simulacrum of Winehouse's louche, decadent drawl.

And yet, Abela's not Amy Winehouse, and somehow that matters.

Is it that the singer was absolutely unique? (I know you're not supposed to use modifiers with a word like "unique," but Winehouse was unique — absolutely.) Is it that her short, calamitous life and seemingly unpreventable death are simply too sad for the banalities of a two-hour movie? The story Winehouse tells is one about the black hole at the center of our celebrity culture, where those who have the gift of talent but not the talent for coping get devoured by attention, addiction, the gawkers at the window as they fall. No one wants to see that movie. We'd have to face ourselves.

"Back to Black" covers Winehouse's life from her early days of singing in London clubs to her signing with Island Records, her first record (2003's "Frank"), the breakthrough to American and international fame with the 2007 hit "Rehab," and rapid dissolution under an onslaught of paparazzi, insecurity, alcohol, heroin and the mendacity of the British tabloids. Mostly, it's a love story of the hardy "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" genre, where the heroine keeps a lamp burning in the window for a guy that any moviegoer can see is a rat bastard.

The rat bastard here is named Blake Fielder-Civil, and he's played with probably a lot more charm than he deserves by Jack O'Connell, who with Josh O'Connor and Ireland's Paul Mescal is part of a new generation of absurdly gifted hunks from the British Isles. The scene where Blake first meets Amy in a pub may be the best moment in the movie, the two circling each other in a smoldering flirt that they both know is heading toward the bedroom until his girlfriend shows up. He knows who she is but keeps it to himself; she knows he knows and is turned on by his cool — it's a lovely oasis before the ensuing 90 minutes of screaming arguments.

The movie depicts Winehouse as a clinging, insanely jealous girlfriend, but it's somehow excused because of her passion or art or working-class milieu — it's never really clear. Fielder-Civil is excused for introducing Amy to crack cocaine and heroin because he, uh, wears a snappy trilby hat? Beats me. "Back to Black" hints at a connection between the singer's volatility and her adoration of torch songs and retro lounge music — unfashionable genres until she single-handedly made them fashionable again — but director Sam Taylor-Johnson keeps the life and the art, the person and the persona, in separate lanes, even when Winehouse is sadly crooning "What Is It About Men?" after a row with Blake. Where's the Amy Winehouse of the records, imperiously surveying the certainty of her own destruction?

You can find her in "Amy," Asif Kapadia's exemplary 2015 documentary made from home movies of Winehouse's early days and from increasingly disturbing performance and paparazzi footage before her 2011 death at 27 from alcohol poisoning. That film gives a much darker portrait of Winehouse's father, Mitch, who's played in "Back to Black" as a meddling but good-hearted yob by Eddie Marsan.

The new movie, in fact, has been made with the approval of the Winehouse family; coincidentally or not, "Back to Black" has the feeling of a whitewash. The triumph and tragedy of this life remain in the grooves of the music, a body of work that stands as all the biopic anyone who ever shivered to an Amy Winehouse song needs.

R. At area theaters. Contains drug use, language throughout, sexual content and nudity. 122 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr's Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.