The Blueblack Hussar (18) 99 mins ***
“Don’t tread on an
ant/You’ll end up black and blue,” warned Adam and the Ants’ manifesto-writing hit “Antmusic”. Thirty-odd years later, Jack Bond’s intriguingly unguarded
fly-on-the-Ant-wall doc finds Adam himself a mite stomped-on by mental health
issues and music-biz vagaries: down but not quite out in Paris and London, he’s
a neo-Napoleon, returning to punk in a bid to escape pop exile. Even the
cringier moments – dollybird backing singers, dodgy new lyrics (“I want to f***
you in the ass”), Mark Ronson’s Pepe Le Pew hair – prove somehow revealing, and
Ant remains a singular character: puckish and potty-minded, yet secretly
sensitive, and possessed of a fine Bryan Ferry impersonation. Those expecting
“Goody Two Shoes” will leave disappointed, but – liberated from the need to
please anybody but himself – the dandy of yore seems, if not happy, then
content, wearing his bruises and battlescars as he once did warpaint.
The Blueblack Hussar screens in selected cinemas on Tuesday.
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