Curtis occasionally suffered epileptic seizures during shows, and in Riley’s portrayal, the line between musical transcendence and neurological breakdown is desperately fine. Maybe that’s the point: you can see the struggle on his face as he becomes possessed by the music and fights to maintain control. As the band becomes famous, the singer’s hesitation to turn himself inside-out onstage curdles into genuine dread. At one point he refuses to perform. “They don’t understand how much I give, how much it affects me,” Curtis tells the band’s manager as the audience screams for him. Riley’s restraint punctures the dangerously romantic notion that Curtis, who killed himself in 1980 on the eve of the band’s first U.S. tour, died for his art. He uses the singer’s illness, and the toll that each show exacted from him, to explore the ambivalence that an artist can feel for his audience. Riley, who sings all of Curtis’s songs in the film, won a British Independent Film Award for his work. But so far he’s been overlooked by U.S. awards committees. Don’t make the same mistake.
