What’s Love Got to Do with It
Brian Gibson (1993)
In the first scene of this Tina Turner biopic, the infant Tina – or Anna Mae Bullock as she was in those days – is the smallest but vocally by far the most theatrical member of a gospel church choir. In spite of reprimands and looks that kill from the stern choir mistress, Anna Mae can’t help herself from going over the top when she’s singing – eventually she’s ejected from the church. Seven-year-old Rae’Ven Larrymore Kelly, as the little girl Tina, has an abandon as a performer that isn’t seen again in this film until, in its last scene, Brian Gibson inserts footage of the real Tina Turner on stage. Putting the genuine article before the audience in this way will always tend to detract from the impression made by the impersonator in a biopic. Here it merely confirms what I felt all the way through. Angela Bassett as the adult Tina earns full marks for effort but something is wrong – something that makes her whole performance – especially when she’s singing (or, at least, miming to) the Turner songs – unnatural and alienating. Bassett’s eyes are certainly smaller than Tina Turner’s. I’m not sure that her other features are but they seem smaller – she overworks the muscles in her face as she tries to capture Turner’s own facial movements. Bassett is primed for the performance of her life (she’s almost alarmingly muscular – much more so than the woman she’s playing, or the fifty-year-old version of her at any rate). You can see that she’s studied Tina Turner conscientiously – and the thought, as well as the physical energy, she’s putting into an imitation of her. But the effect of all this effort is relentlessly artificial. Even when Angela Bassett isn’t singing, her acting is tense and overdone: she strains to make every moment brilliant. There’s no core to or fluency in what she’s doing – it’s one highlight after another.
Laurence Fishburne as Ike Turner has the advantage that he doesn’t need to match up in the audience’s mind (or mine anyway) with an image of the original. But the rhythm and variety of Fishburne’s acting is marvellous, and his sympathetic portrait of a man with deep psychological problems transcends the demonisation of Ike in Kate Lanier’s script. As the film goes on, Ike’s every appearance puts you on edge: this is, to some extent, an apprehension of violence – that he’s going to mete out more physical (or sexual) punishment to Tina. But there’s more to it than that: Ike is frightening not just because you don’t know what he’s going to do next (though you fear it won’t be good) but because Fishburne convinces you that Ike doesn’t know either. His performance increasingly throws the film (and the audience) off balance because he makes Ike, rather than Tina, the main subject of interest. What’s Love Got to Do with It has an hysterical, masochistic, I-will-survive tone that may or may not derive from the source material – the autobiography I, Tina (which she co-wrote with the movie’s ‘consultant’ Kurt Loder). It’s not as enjoyable as singing star biopics often are and its overwrought quality feels fake. Laurence Fishburne’s portrait of Ike Turner doesn’t.
7 February 2012