I only met Amy Winehouse once, in 2005, and fittingly it was in a pub in Camden Town, two years after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album, Frank. She was just a Jewish girl from Southgate with huge expressive eyes, a wicked sense of humour and a need to perform. That is the Amy I recognised in the early part of Asif Kapadia's much-lauded documentary. The other Amy - mascara-smeared, paper-thin and troubled - is the one we all recognise from the front pages she was splashed across after every drug-fuelled incident that plagued her much-too short life.
How this supremely-talented vocalist lost her way is what Kapadia asks in his film and through the testimonies of some of her closest friends who have never spoken before, fingers are pointed at the enablers who failed to rescue her from her sad fate.
The Winehouse family have dissociated themselves from the film with father Mitch claiming he is shown in the worst possible light.
This is true and it is arguable that the man Amy worshipped has been reduced to little more than a cameo with no real right of reply.
Long reads: Amy, the film: So who is to blame?
Amy and me — the story of how I rejected her
He, along with Amy's management and the paparazzi who circled her like baying wolves every time she left her house are all implicated, but it is her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who nonchalantly admits to introducing her to heroin and crack-cocaine, who bears the brunt of responsibility.
The positive things Amy saw in Blake are not apparent in this film and though he bleats about the shared troubled past that made them soul mates, he later dumped her because he believed he was too good for her.
Heartless and cruel doesn't begin to describe it, though it was because of him, wounded Amy was able to compose the brilliant Back to Black album.
Music was the only therapy that really worked for Amy and Kapadia cleverly lets her brilliant and extraordinarily mature lyrics drive the story when scrawled across the screen. Her voice is haunting and the words she utters even more so.
Though you know before it starts how this film ends, to witness Amy's creative process is a privilege.
At 27, she died with the music still in her and I am not ashamed to say that I cried as the credits rolled.
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