THE ART OF AMÁLIA
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
I don't know Fado from Fabian, but I do know what makes a good documentary. Regardless of how flattering your opinion is of legendary Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues, you owe it to yourself to separate her talents from the movie that documents them, because the film clearly doesn't do her justice.
The Art of Amália starts with promise, with ex-Talking Head David Byrne waxing earnestly about when he first heard Rodrigues's music. But the film abruptly detours after that one minute, becoming a strictly linear monologue telling the story her life. The picture is more boring than a history textbook. Why? Because little in Amália's life was or is extraordinary. We wander, year by year, from her early days as a nightclub singer to her career in cinema to more singing to the many awards she's won and finally... to more singing. And poof, the story is over. Ready for The Madonna Story, anyone?
If you think I'm just a naysayer, consider a film like Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, which documented the life of a musician but did it with style, despite the fact that the audience had never heard of the man. Amália was never kidnapped in her sleep. Amália was not in the KGB. Nothing much happened in her life that's film-worthy at all. Amália sang and she sang a lot. And while she was very good at it, that doesn't mean it makes a great film.
Then again, neither do slow zooms on newspaper clippings, advertisements bearing her name, and still photographs, plus interviews with some of the most poorly-spoken people ever to grace the screen. The production values are nonexistent. The narration is banal and obvious.
Ultimately, even big fans of Amália are going to be disappointed with The Art of Amália, the sole bright spot being her Fado music, which is heartfelt and tears at the soul. Some 60 songs are rendered by her, in whole or in part, throughout the 90-minute film, and they're certainly pleasing to the ears... provided you're tuning out the rest of the picture.
RATING: **
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Bruno de Almeida Producer: Manuel Falcão Writer: Frank Coelho, Vítor Pavão dos Santos, Artur Ribeiro, Bruno de Almeida Starring: Amália Rodrigues
http://www.arcofilms.com/amalia/index.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=filmcriticcom&path=subst/video/sellers/amazon-top-100-dvd.html Movie Fiends: Check out Amazon.com's Top 100 Hot DVDs!
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews