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film review

Amy Winehouse performing at MTV Movies Awards, 2007.Getty Images

While Amy Winehouse famously said no to rehab, filmmaker Asif Kapadia says yes. Rehab, as in the rehabilitation of the gifted singer's legacy. With his intimate documentary on the troubled British soulstress, the Senna director Kapida is perhaps over-sympathetic to his film's subject but artful in his employ of the tattooed, addictive and bulimic contralto's own lyrics in explaining her disappointments, unmet needs and seeds of demise. On her 2006 hit Rehab, Winehouse waved off treatment, claiming she "ain't got the time," and, besides, "My daddy thinks I'm fine." Daddy is Mitch Winehouse, characterized here (along with the manager Raye Cosbert and charmless, co-dependent boyfriend Blake Fielder) as an exploitative villain who failed to be the custodial male her daughter apparently craved. The tragedy is that while others were asleep on their watches, Amy Winehouse was self-aware, even resigned: "I tread a troubled track/My odds are stacked/I'll go back to black."

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