80s Disco Baby Whitney Remembered

Sylvie Woods
16th Jul 2018

80s Disco Baby Remembered By Kevin Macdonald In Whitney

Slender, bejewelled arms wind through an off-shoulder blouse in Whitney Houston’s first television performance. Her head throws back on the money-notes, her belted waist sways, and she sings "when I think of home, I think of a place with love overflowing".

Transmission Films’ astonishing amalgamation of Whitney Houston’s rise and fall, simply called Whitney, juxtaposes widely-seen clips of the star dolled-up, successful and moneyed, with earlier, more intimate portrayals. In tow, never-before-seen archival footage of Whitney in her youth sets the documentary a world away from the wild-eyed, rambling has-been of our last two decades.

Director Kevin Macdonald elicits depictions of adolescent Whitney from her brothers, musician-mother and family friend ‘Aunt’ Bae to start with. (MacDonald collects a diverse and interesting range of voices for the documentary including past lovers, extended family, former employees, colleagues, agents and managers, but these first few are the most revelatory voices).

‘Aunt’ Bae reveals that before Whitney was a perennial "ATM to the people around her", she was "unreal, the most beautiful child". Whitney, called ‘Nippy’ by those closest to her, is chronicled by Bae to have had an ‘idyllic’ childhood. Later however we are confronted with the knowledge that Whitney and her brothers were routinely molested as children by musician-Aunt, Dee Dee Warwick, unbeknownst to other family members and friends. Macdonald uncovers still more betrayals within Whitney’s support system: Whitney’s father burgling her out of her earnings, domestic abuse from husband Bobby Brown and every member of Whitney’s family living off her income, which dried up dramatically during her later period of drug addiction. Through a host of disembodied perspectives, Macdonald fashions a portrait of Whitney’s inner circle, their individual agendas and contribution to her fatal isolation.

As interviewees are asked to recall later and later periods of Whitney’s twenties, friends, family members and colleagues express less interest in Whitney’s music, talent or personality and more in her money, social advantage and touring lifestyle. By watching Whitney’s inner circle’s material preoccupations aired beside footage of the singer’s actual successes, international acclaim and bone-chilling performances, audiences can understand a score of beneficiaries to have concocted a toxic inner circle of dependants in the name of family.

Whitney is a must-see for fans, surfacing intriguing, unseen footage of the singer. It is, however, Whitney’s portrait of the opportunism that stalks and surrounds fame which makes the composition a fascinating and significant film in its own right.

Whitney arrives in Australian cinemas July 26.