- Title: Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
- IMDb: link
Told through the use of an unpublished memoir found after her death, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg looks back at the life of model, actress, and Rolling Stones‘ muse Anita Pallenberg with a large section of the film devoted to her relationships with Brian Jones and Keith Richards. The documentary from Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill is most notable for the vintage photos and video footage of Pallenberg’s life incorporated into the film.
For those curious about Pallenberg, or fans of the Stones in general, the documentary is worth seeking out, but the film’s sole purpose is to showcase how Pallenberg saw her life and allow that story to be told in her own words. The merging of Pallenberg’s own words, read by an actor, married to the substantial amount of footage available provides an unsentimental, at times perhaps bitter, look back at the life of the “It Girl” of the 60s and 70s. Given the control of the narrative is given to Pallenberg’s ghost, where the film falls a bit short is in delivering a larger perspective to help place her importance in popular culture for today’s audience. We’re given plenty of what happened, but a little discussion of why or how it’s important could have added to the proceedings.
Watch the trailer