“Bloodlight and Bami”– Movie Review

This weekend, I attended the opening of the new musical documentary “Grace Jones:  Bloodlight and Bami”, starring Grace Jones. 

Synopsis

A documentary where Grace Jones is seen performing live in concert and in behind-the-scenes visits with her family in Jamaica.

Story

Performer Grace Jones travels to her home – the island nation of Jamaica – where she spends time with her family.  In these moments, this woman with the bigger-than-life personality becomes suddenly humanized; she is less the celebrity and more the dutiful daughter, sister and aunt enjoying down-time with relatives she has not seen in a very long time.  At times, it seems as though she is less having a family reunion than acting like a tourist; Jones visits various attractions and takes occasional snapshots of the surroundings and people.

While promoting her latest recording, a disco version of “La Vie En Rose”, she goes to Paris in order to appear on a television show where she will perform the song.  Unknown to her, the set is designed in such a way where she will be surrounded by young women dancing in lingerie.  Following the taping, she argues with the show’s producer that she feels as though she looks like either a pimp or a Madame who operates a brothel.  The producer, wishing to appease her, offers to let her re-tape the segment without the dancers. 

At this point in her career, Jones suddenly finds herself without a recording contract.  As a result, she must coordinate her own recording sessions if she is to make the new album she wishes to start.  What this means is that she will have to pay for the recording studio and musicians out of her own pocket and hope to get reimbursed either by sales of the album or concert appearances.  Unfortunately, some of the musicians she has lined up turn out to be unreliable and fail to arrive for a scheduled recording date.  Desperate, Jones must either convince them to join her or find new musicians on short notice.    

Review

Once upon a time, there was a big problem with documentaries:  it was called The Talking Heads Syndrome.  This problem was manifested by rapid cuts to a blur of many different faces in close-up, each of whom were being interviewed about the subject of the documentary.  There was very little intercut between the interviewees and other footage or even still photographs.  As a result of this, many people got turned off to watching documentaries because it felt more like a lecture than a film.  While there is little to no justification for going back to this style of filmmaking, “Bloodlight And Bami” might have benefited from a prudent amount. 

Not unlike Grace Jones herself, this documentary is pretty much all over the place.  There is precious little in the way of context or explanation for exactly what we are seeing and who we are hearing from throughout the film.  That’s unfortunate because there seems to be plenty interesting there that is alluded to about Jones’ past and what she’s experiencing now in the present.  Although it frequently intercuts between performances and personal time with her family, it’s not really biographical; we learn nothing about her acting career and never see clips of her many movies. 

Following the screening, there was a question and answer session with Jones and the film’s director, Sophie Fiennes.  Fiennes said that she met Jones at a screening of one of her other documentaries in 2003; they hit it off and decided to work together on something.  Shortly thereafter, shooting started and occurred sporadically over a period of years in between other projects with which each were previously occupied.  Jones revealed that one of her greatest professional regrets was the fact that she turned down a role in the original version of the movie “Blade Runner”; after reading the script, she abruptly changed her mind – but by that time, it was too late as the role had already been re-cast.