from Interview

FIVE MINUTES WITH THE LEGENDARY GRACE JONES

By Michael-Oliver Harding

In an early scene of the new documentary Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami, the ferocious songstress and boundary-smashing model—whose prior silver screen highlights include portraying an Eiffel Tower-scaling Bond henchwoman and a centuries-old vampire stripper—signs autographs for fans huddled behind a barricade. One of them asks if she’d ever act in another movie, to which she commandingly answers, “My own!” This sets in motion a globetrotting journey a full decade in the making, acquainting us with Jones’ loved ones while peeling away her enigmatic, larger-than-life persona.

Director Sophie Fiennes is with the avant-pop legend when she delivers powerhouse performances in a Dublin theatre, attends church with her mother and revisits her Pentecostal upbringing in Jamaica, sips Cristal in her hotel room in a fur coat and reconnects with her former co-conspirator (and father to her son) Jean-Paul Goude in Paris. Over the course of the film, the subversive 69-year-old performer—who reminds us men should be penetrated at least once “so they know what it’s like to receive”—reveals herself like she seldom has before. Judging by the outpouring of praise during a post-screening Q&A at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, audiences were relieved that the ageless diva—who once threw her baby shower at the legendary Paradise Garage dressed as a toy soldier—has lost none of her bite or risk-taking spirit.

When Interview meets her the following evening for an expeditious five-minute chat in the dining room of an opulent Yorkville hotel, Jones is feasting on a hearty meal of steak frites. “I have to eat and talk, darling, so I’m afraid you’ll hear my munching on your recorder.” And with that said, Jones proceeded, her wit unimpaired and her laughter as rip-roaring as ever.

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