Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami

We're still basking in the majesty of Grace Jones after her recent Australian visit and the release of Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami - on International Women's Day - serves to further fuel our super-fandom.

Director Sophie Fiennes first met Jones when she was filming her documentary Hoover Street Revival, which features Jones's brother Bishop Noel and his Pentecostal church. After being repeatedly approached to make a documentary, Grace Jones got in touch with Fiennes in the hope that they could perhaps work together to come up with something. Fiennes requested that the doco be interspersed with live performance and was granted unlimited access to the star over several years.

The documentary's opening credits see Jones performing Slave To The Rhythm, showing off her sustained hula hoop spinning while singing the apt lyrics, "Keep it up, keep it up!" and wearing a black strapless leotard, sky-high heels and elaborate, gold, feline-inspired Philip Treacy headpiece. Cut to a throng of fans outside a stage door, waving memorabilia they wish to have signed in Jones's face. "Now one each," Jones instructs from behind dark shades, "So sorry." One voice asks, "Would you do another movie?" Jones replies, "My own."

And here it is. Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami, which comes in at just under two hours. The film's pace often seems to replicate the drudgery of a performer's life on the road, all the waiting around killing time included.

You immediately get a sense that Jones trusts Fiennes implicitly. The director trails her subject to various locations including a photo shoot and TV appearance in Paris, a family vacation to Jamaica (where some of the recording sessions for her 2008 Hurricane album took place) and of course the specially staged, sumptuous musical numbers in a Dublin theatre.  

Finding herself without a record label, Jones funded these Hurricane recording sessions herself, which allowed her the artistic freedom to control everything about the music she chose to put out in the world. And what a joy it is to see Sly & Robbie at work as we hear these songs take shape!  

"My mother was the Williams and my father was the Jones," our subject explains and we're reminded of Jones's autobiographical song Williams' Blood (from the Hurricane album), which provided some insight into her family history. But Bloodlight And Bami takes us way deeper as if we're eavesdropping on Jones and her family recounting childhood memories.

After her parents emigrated to Syracuse, New York, Jones and her siblings remained in Jamaica where they were raised by their grandmother and step-grandfather, Master Patrick (Mas P). We're told the children were forced to read passages from the bible while Mas P beat them with a variety of straps and canes, all of which he named. In one chilling scene, Jones admits she had an epiphany during a drama class, realising that the reason she can be "so scary" during performance is because she adopts Mas P's mannerisms.

If you've always wondered what drove Jones to slap Russell Harty during a live chat show appearance on the BBC, you'll gain a greater understanding here.

We also meet Jones's vampiric, after-dark party persona. In conversation with a Parisian taxi driver, she expresses her extreme disappointment that less people seem to go out partying these days before teasing her son Paulo Goude over the phone, "In the old days we used to stay up all night then go straight to the shoot, when we were your age."

Of course, Jones is always good for a zinger and every word that tumbles from her mouth is quoteworthy. While she struggles to open a stubborn mussel with a knife, Jones quips, "I wish my pussy was this tight."

She's not a performer who wears a mask (except for the ones Treacy designs for her) - what you see on stage is how she acts once the curtain drops, because Jones is never putting on an act. Jones is uncompromising as an artist and in business, always fiercely protecting her artistic vision. "Sometimes you have to be a HIGH-flying bitch," she cackles at one point, quoting from Dolores Claiborne. But that doesn't mean Jones is heartless; she can even find sympathy in her heart for Mas P.  

This documentary is unconventional since there's no archival footage or talking heads; it's all about where Jones is at now, as it should be. And we repeatedly see her taking on men, without fear, throughout Bloodlight And Bami. Jones tirelessly claims what matters to her and the current climate is just perfect for this film's release. "Now is the time for women!" Jones extols towards the end of Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami and this documentary is an important part of the conversation.