Joy Division hit the silverscreen

Mon 21st May, 2007 in International News

24 Hour Party People wasn’t enough for ya? Well everybody’s favourite suicidally maudlin rockers will be back on the big screen with a film about the life and death of lead singer Ian Curtis that is already winning praise at Cannes.

Control is a biopic about the iconic singer who took his own life in 1980 on the eve of Joy Division’s first ever US tour. The screenplay is based on the book Touching From a Distance, written by Curtis’ wife Deborah who is also a co-producer of the film. It’s directed by famed photographer Anton Corbijn and takes a warts and all approach to Curtis’s troubled life, looking into his rocky marriage and extramarital affair as well as his increasingly frequent seizures.

The title is a reference to one of Joy Division’s most loved songs She’s Lost Control, which many feel was a bittersweet reference to his own life. And the initial buzz is good – the film has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and it received rapturous applause from the critics.