M arianne Faithfull led different lives and was cast in various roles. Some roles she chose and wrote herself; others were forced upon her, like an ugly hat or an ill-fitting suit. She was the convent girl and the teenage bride, the 60s It girl and the rock star’s girlfriend. She was the pop singer, the folk singer, the tragic addict and the indomitable survivor. Broken English, a flawed but ardent new documentary from Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, effectively arranges all of these incarnations like museum exhibits and invites its subject to review each one in turn – and then smash the glass to set them free.

Faithfull broke the mould, and so it is fitting that the film of her life should do the same, except that Forsyth and Pollard’s main conceit feels jerry-rigged and overdramatised

See Full Page