Bob Marley: One Love/Back to Black: Special evening of musical biopics on Canal +

Kingsley Ben-Adir and Marisa Abela are totally inhabited by their roles.

Released last Valentine's Day, Bob Marley: One Love attracted 2 million French people to cinemas. Two months later, another biopic about a music star crossed the million admissions mark here: Back to Blackretracing the journey of Amy Winehouse.

Two films that left the editorial team First hungry… but still not lacking in qualities. Already through their casting, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Marisa Abela carry their respective projects with total involvement.

So to wait until they are broadcast on Canal +, here are our reviews.

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Bob Marley: One Loveby Reinaldo Green

What is striking about this Bob Marley, one lovethis is how the film is defined by its shortcomings – we are constantly left wanting more, as the film seems to carefully avoid any risk of roughness by erasing as many passages as possible. Basically, the film will not surprise fans of musical-pie biopics, over-locked by the entourage of the idol concerned, like Bohemian Rhapsody. The film alternates a double structure (the story of youth and a key concert) which recalls that of Walk the Lineexcept that the story of Bob Marley Begins ends after a while for no reason. We won't see much of the astonishing musical broth of 50s Jamaica in which young Marley grew up, nor will we capture the source of his musical genius. Rather than attempting to invoke the voices of the dead, the film expresses the official voice of the survivors. It's difficult, that said, not to vibrate when the music fills the cinema, channeled by Kingsley Ben-Adir – a completely jaw-dropping performance but really inhabited by the actor, fully invested in his role, right up to the erasure. Thanks to him, one Love captures a bit of the mystique that guided Marley in his art and in his life.

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Back to Blackby Sam Taylor-Johnson

Amy Winehouse (1983 – 2011) belongs to the famous Club of 27 (Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain…) without us knowing very well what this sign intends to tell us. Asif Kapadia's doc on the singer (Amy2015) having largely done the job, we could legitimately wonder what more a fictionalization would bring. Especially since unlike his colleges of 27, his life marked out in the air of social networks had been followed almost directly.

This overheated world (24/7 cameras, wild fans, alcohol, drugs, etc.) remains largely off-camera in a film concerned with polishing certain angles. But paradoxically this sweetening parasites the cliché to put her diva under another bell, that of her intimacy as a young girl who dreamed of being tidy (her songs do not claim anything other than simple happiness with Blake, her only love) but that his incredible talent will therefore have been disturbing.

Sam Taylor-Johnson's film thus demarcates a micro-territory where, from the small furnished apartment to the corner pub, from the recording studio to the apartment of the beloved grandmother, there are only a few steps that are enough to themselves. Amy W. therefore becomes a Sofia Coppola-style heroine, bothered by noises from outside. Marisa Abela who has the impossible task of playing the singer is perfect. She goes there, gives voice and reappropriates clothes that are never in full range. We will say what we want, even sanitized the whole thing retains a certain hold.

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