Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

Synopsis A portrait of '70s pop music icon, Grace Jones.

Sophie Fiennes’ film about Grace Jones is less of a standard documentary and, appropriately enough given that Jones’s stage image has been called “neo-cubist”, more of a collaged portrait of the one-time fashion model and eventual disco diva who came to fame in the late 1970s with songs such as ‘La Vie En Rose”, “Nightclubbing’ and “Pull Up To The Bumper”.  Although not a great singer, her uniquely formidable stage presence made her not only a style icon but a trail-blazer for independent female pop music performers such as Annie Lennox.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami plays very much to Jones image as it mixes its two main threads. On the one hand it follows Jones as she return to Jamaica where she was born in 1948 in order to visit her family and work with reggae legends Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare on a new album.  This sojourn is interspersed with excerpts of Jones performing on her most recent tour, performaces which amply demonstrate that although pushing seventy years of age, her stage presence has not in any way diminished

The more inquisitive viewer may be a little disappointed that there is no explanation of the actual construction of the Jones' stage persona which at least formally was largely the doing of French illustrator, photographer and graphic designer, Jean-Paul Goude. Also although they are no longer a team (Goude was her lover and father of her son) there is no explanation of who is behind her current show and stage look.

On the up side Fiennes’s non-interventionist, fly-on-the-wall filming of Jones’s visit to Jamaica allows us glimpses of the person behind the masks, with at one stage Jones suggesting that her “scary” image is a direct consequence of being brought up in a home dominated by her Bible (and child) bashing step-grandfather.

If not entirely revealing Jones’ fans will, needless to say, lap it up while music buffs in general and roots reggae buffs in particular will find it rewarding. As to what its title means, having seen the film I am none the wiser.

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