Michel Petrucciani

Michel Petrucciani was born with brittle bone disease, barely passed a metre in height, used a custom rig to reach the pedals, and died in 1999 at thirty-six. The documentary assembles that life out of the musician's own words and the accounts of the people around him. The subject is not a struggle against illness. It is Petrucciani's refusal to be seen as a victim. His relationships with women, the drinking, the relentless touring and his deliberate pushing at the limits of his body are all left unsoftened. The form leans on archive: concert recordings, home movies, photographs and interviews. Radford does not cut away from the playing, letting the music stand as part of the narration. Michael Radford directs, the same Radford who made Il Postino and 1984, working here on the non-fiction side where he is rarely seen. Leading jazz musicians of the period speak about Petrucciani in the film. His Blue Note years coincided with the label's revival after a long dormancy. Who it is for: jazz listeners and anyone who likes musician portraits. Who it is not for: viewers who want an orderly biography; the film leaves chronology to the memories of its speakers and drifts from time to time.