Pollard and Forsyth’s film is a self-consciously pretentious intent to refresh the tired documentary format. Tilda Swinton offers aphorisms from the newly formed Ministry of Biography. George MacKay interviews the late singer with a puppyish enthusiasm. There’s a round table discussion group assessing Faithful from a feminist perspective. Various luminaries visit the studio to record versions of the singer’s songs, including a beautiful version of As Time Goes By by Beth Orton. It’s an enjoyable, scratchy mix, which doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel. It also felt as though, whilst Faithful is a willing participant in the project, the film still twinkle toes around whoever she really might have been. Part of the valid pretentious aspect is that the film suggests it is going to provide a more holistic approach to the biographical format, and give us a sense of what the events conveyed really felt like. However, the close involvement of the singer perhaps works against this ambition. Faithful is a fascinating figure who comes across as a benign savant, when she herself states she was prone to anger and self-destruction. The years of living on the streets feel glossed over, and the mars bar isn’t even referred to. Those darker elements of her nature, the ones she might have had in common with some of her artistic heroes, the beats, les poètes maudits, are treated with kid gloves, and the film, in part as a result of its distancing devices, feels slightly sanitised. Then again, it can’t be easy directing a film about someone who dies in the process of making it.
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