Last Days of Left Eye: A-

Documentaries about musicians are a stock craft: they often seek to set-up the usually deceased singer as an idol, a god, of righteousness and, if possible, piety and charity. Sometimes though it can go even worse as when a reel of facts and interviews unintentionally vilify the subject instead of vindicating him or her. "Last Days of Left Eye" really does niether and it does both; it is a scrappy film filled to the brim with messy presence that at times can prove powerfully graceful. The most potent ability to boasts is that capablity to reveal in tiny increments, or in quiet gestures, who Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez was.

Left Eye was most famous for her huge success as the "L" in TLC, one of the highest selling female bands of all time and one of brightest acts of the 90's. She was also famous for her controveries: flying off the handle on her bandmates and her boyfriend. After being cast off by her own decision, and having had her solo effort Supernova shelved after massive amounts of publicity, Lopez went to Honduras for a 30-day spiritual retreat. While there she filmed herself constantly. Whether she was swimming or divulging thoughts to the camera, she was constantly exposing herself. Her desire behind such a project - she wanted the world to know, really know, the real Left Eye - lends it a hypnotic confessional aura at times. Of course, while she was in Honduras she was also killed. It is her untimely death that lends the film much needed emotional gravity but it is her electrifying persona that lends it a core of towering skill as the rare film that brings to light a gnarled and complicated portrait of a woman destined, by sheer mastery of her many talents, to be a mega-star.

At turns witty and compassionate, at others cold and irreverent, Lisa Lopez is the perfect documentary subject and her character is even more real for having been caught on film in the most everyday acts. The footage that she directed herself has a stringent power as a heady cocktail of desperate self-awareness and searching need. The structure of the film around the film that is her 30-day trip is alittle more messy. Utiziling the expected information (her rise to stardom, her fights, her arson) as well as sweeping visuals of South America is a lofty idea and it works for the most part - especially when brought together with Lisa's insightful musings. Yet in the film's striving to trace the downward spiral of Lopez, it falters on numerous occasions. Slipping on the tricky issue of strange tribal doctors and then again with footage of her bitchy assistant, the final years of the singer don't play so much gloomy and symbolic of her coming doom (as intended) but rather as a mash-up of the wrong social circle and out-of-context footage.

Where it falters once in death though, it soars in life. As a celebration of human life it is a spell-binding movie. It's skillfull in the way, thanks in part as well to Lauren Lazin, it shows Lisa in the midst of her various examinations, teasing us with the thought that she's dead. And in the way that is splices her outrages with her heart and intelligence, it is wonderfully dynamic. Doesn't it, in the end, makes sense that such a professedly jubilant study of life would be amateurish when it comes to death? Ultimately though, by bringing us so close to such a momentous and vibrant existence, this documentary is a rousing success.