What's Love Got to Do with It

Anna Mae Bullock's journey out of a Tennessee church choir into becoming Tina Turner, and the years spent with Ike Turner. The film is not about how well the two worked on stage but about the violence off it, and it ends with a woman walking out having kept nothing but her name. It is not interested in music. It is interested in the economics of a dependent relationship: Ike is husband, employer and producer at once, so leaving him means leaving home, job and repertoire in the same move. The form is standard musical biography: stage numbers, tour montages, studio scenes. What holds it up is not the template but Angela Bassett's physical performance. There is a detail worth knowing about the songs. Bassett does not sing on screen; she performs to versions Tina Turner re-recorded for the film. Turner sang the old hits she had cut with Ike again, from scratch, for this. Ike Turner reacted hard. He said the book and the film were full of lies and insisted the rape scene was invented. He did admire Laurence Fishburne's performance, and when they met on set he gave the actor some pointers. Bassett and Fishburne were both nominated for Oscars and neither won; Bassett took the Golden Globe in the comedy or musical category. Brian Gibson directed. Who it is for: viewers who want a music biography and Bassett's career-defining role. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the persistence of the violence hard to sit through. The film shows the beatings repeatedly and does not soften them.