TIFF Review: Amy Berg's Rock Doc 'Janis: Little Girl Blue'

Port Arthur lies on the southeastern end of Texas, ninety minutes from Houston, and two hours from Lafayette, Louisiana. It’s a tiny place, home to under 60,000 residents, and one can only imagine it’s the kind of town where if you grow up with any kind of worldly aspirations, you start plotting your escape fast. Port Arthur marks the unlikely and humble beginnings of rock ‘n roll legend Janis Joplin, whose boisterous spirit and refusal to fill pre-conceived social, gender, or sexual roles all but assured the town could never contain her. She “couldn’t figure out how to make herself like everyone else,” her sister reflects in Amy Berg’s sturdy documentary “Janis: Little Girl Blue.” Janis was an outcast, but she soon found a city full of them that she would call home.

San Francisco was the place to be in the ‘60s and it’s where Joplin fled from the rigid conformity and conservatism of her home and discovered, well, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. It’s where she cut her musical chops,...