Sam Taylor-Johnson is good with actors and too protective of the people they play. We value the performances she draws out, but her films too often settle for a sympathetic romance when the story needs more scrutiny.
Fi1m perspective
In Back to Black (2024), Amy Winehouse sings in the front room while her family joins in. Marisa Abela takes the high line, with Lesley Manville's Cynthia at the piano. Taylor-Johnson finds something worth watching in the pleasure these people take in making music together. She is alert to what actors can do in a small room. We are less convinced by her judgement about which story those performances should serve.
Her feature debut, Nowhere Boy (2009), found an edge in the young John Lennon that the later musician portrait lacks. Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) took her into erotic romance, where her sympathy for the central character was a sensible starting point. She then co-wrote and directed A Million Little Pieces (2019), before returning to a musician's life with Back to Black. The material changed, but the preference for telling a story from the subject's perspective remained.
Fifty Shades of Grey shows both the value and the limits of that sympathy. Working from Kelly Marcel's adaptation of E.L. James's novel, Taylor-Johnson allows Dakota Johnson to give Anastasia Steele wit and curiosity. We were frustrated because those flashes of playfulness made the repetitive courtship feel like a missed opportunity. Christian Grey's expensive surroundings register more clearly than his appeal, and the film gives his rules more attention than her uncertainty. There is care in taking the attraction seriously, but too little explanation of why this particular man should hold her interest.
In Back to Black, the problem is more damaging because the film keeps making Winehouse's story gentler. Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and Taylor-Johnson decide early that this is a love story, and Amy's relationship with Blake becomes their chief concern. Abela is good enough to make us stop measuring her against Winehouse, but that achievement cannot excuse how kindly the film treats everyone around her. The kitchen scenes with Manville have more to offer than the romance, because the performances hold our attention without needing us to approve of anyone.
Her preference for close-ups suits a director whose actors give us reasons to keep watching through these disappointments. Start with Nowhere Boy if the safer choices in the later films have put you off. We would welcome another film willing to be that sharp about its subject.
Biography
Sam Taylor-Johnson (also credited as Sam Taylor-Wood) is an English film director and former artist. Born in London in 1967, she was associated with the Young British Artists movement as a photographer and video artist before moving into directing.
Her feature directorial debut was the 2009 biopic Nowhere Boy. She went on to direct Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) and the 2024 Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black. She has also directed episodes of the series Gypsy (2017) and Hunters (2020), and the film A Million Little Pieces (2019).
Taylor-Johnson received an OBE for services to the arts in 2011. She has collaborated repeatedly with screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh.
