Cannes Review: Asif Kapadia's Devastating, Discomfiting Amy Winehouse Documentary 'Amy'

There is something intensely macabre about the process of watching the shattering new documentary on British singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse, who died of alcohol-related heart failure at the age of 27 in July 2011. It's a gripping and thoroughly effective, perhaps even brilliant piece of biographical documentary filmmaking, as one would expect from the director who brought us award-winning biodoc "Senna" in 2010. Put together from a welter of material that, like recent title "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," uses home movie footage, along with voiceover excerpts from family and friends, and snippets of Winehouse's performances and interviews, the portrait doc helmer Asif Kapadia builds of Winehouse is fluid and comprehensive. It really feels as though we are with her day by day, tracking her every move, parsing her every expression, her every stumble, especially in those final months as the zero hour approaches. That's also the source of a great part of the...