Documentary Review: ‘Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami’

Review by Jacquelin Hipes

The uninitiated who sit down to Sophie Fiennes’ new documentary to learn about the life and career of its subject, singer/model/actress Grace Jones, may find themselves a bit adrift. While Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami boasts incredibly intimate access to her daily life, it swoops from the recording studio, to gigs, to her family’s home in Jamaica with little structure. Passion—of many types—constitutes the sole connecting thread between every vignette. This comes through in the film’s subtitle, derived from Jamaican patois: bloodlight referring to the illuminated red light outside a recording studio in use; and bami, meaning bread or daily sustenance. As intense in her performances as in her personal life, Jones powers through with a dynamism that helps make up for the lack of direction.

Born in Jamaica in 1948, she moved to New York in the early 1960’s. It was there she began her modeling career before crossing the Atlantic to work for the likes of Yves St. Laurent and appear on a spate of glamorous magazine covers. She secured her first recording contract in 1977, becoming first a star of the disco era, then evolving into an eclectic mix of styles that served to keep her not just popular, but wildly successful through the 80’s, 90’s, and beyond. Her fashion and voice both call to mind a female David Bowie, as do her confessional lyrics that are often autobiographical in nature.

All these details come not from Fiennes’ film, rather from a quick internet search instead. Devoid of any intimate confessionals or a guiding narrative, details of Jones’ personal life come in disconnected snippets. The relationship with her religious father was always strained and, as evidenced by some well-placed cuts, influenced some of her work. She is a demanding collaborator that insists on adherence to professionalism and an artistic ideal. We see her berate tardy musicians trying to bail on a recording session reserved and paid for by Jones; later, we watch as she likens the staging of a recorded performance to a madam and her whores. (It isn’t a positive connotation, no matter what the producer thinks.) While we get a sense of the momentum behind Grace Jones and her forty year career, the absence of any organization on Fiennes’ part makes it difficult to pull any meaning from it all.

The documentary’s high points are unquestionably the staged performances of Jones’ greatest hits interspersed throughout. Her talent and work ethic impress even those not acquainted with her work, myself included. These final results provide the only tangible commentary on the cost and reward of Jones’ sacrifices. Whether the trappings of cinema vérité that make up the rest of Grace Jones are enough to satisfy long-time fans of the artist, I cannot say. For a viewer unfamiliar with yet intrigued by her work they manage only to tease, rather than reveal, any of the rich stories behind her sly smile.