Courtney Love Reintroduced In Sundance Documentary ‘Antiheroine’: “I Got Kicked Out Of The Party And I’m Coming Back After A Very Long Time”

Courtney Love became the woman many people loved to hate. Some reviled the songwriter, guitarist and Hole lead singer for her public and private behavior and drug use. Even more vitriol and suspicion were cast her way after Love’s husband, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, took his own life; many people blamed her for his suicide, and some went so far as to accuse her of murdering Cobain.

One way to describe Love’s role in the public imagination — antiheroine. That, in fact, is the title of a documentary about Love that premieres tonight at the Sundance Film Festival (the title comes from her own writings). The nonfiction feature directed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall takes a fresh look at the singer and actress, who turned 61 last year.

“Courtney definitely saw the film as this opportunity for her to just retell her story right from the beginning as she sees it,” Lovelace tells Deadline. “She was ready for that. She wanted to do that.”

Antiheroine follows a clean and sober Love as she works on a new album, her first in years. The documentary delves into every corner of her life, from her upbringing to her time with Hole, the Cobain bond and Love’s sometimes fraught relationship with the couple’s one child, Frances Bean Cobain. Like Love herself, it’s an uncensored, raucous account of a turbulent life.

“She’s just so herself in such an unfiltered way, which obviously at times is a lot, but it’s so unique in the era we’re in,” Lovelace observes. “It’s very refreshing to be in her presence because she just says what she thinks… She definitely was like, ‘I’m ready to make a record and re-own my story,’ basically.”

Her personal story is one of drama and trauma. In the film, she says her dad dosed her with LSD when she was 4. She says her stepfather encouraged her to take her first drink when was 10. “My mother never loved me,” she declares, saying mom Linda Carroll moved to New Zealand in 1973, leaving Courtney behind. Over the years, Love has provided shifting accounts of her background, but it seems safe to conclude she lacked a stable childhood.

The directors say they approached the project without preconceived notions.

“We sort of went into it and being like, ‘Let’s forget what we know and just simply absorb from her basically about how she felt about certain events,’” Lovelace says. “Every time James and I go into a film, I think we try and have the opposite of a sort of ‘investigative POV.’ Me and James see as our job to be like, ‘What we can do is try and make a film that is true to you and your experience. And the film will be an extension of you.’ The film needs to feel like Courtney and Courtney’s truth within it needs to be the sort of driving force.”

This is not a “Let me tell you all the things I regret” kind of film, but Love displays a measure of self-scrutiny. She refers to her “too-muchness” more than once – meaning the tornado of her personality. She also notes, “I don’t think about likability ever.” Among her other quotable lines: “I’m insufferable.” “I like myself better when I’m writing.” “I was really good at creating a riot.” Or this cogent observation: “The most transgressive thing you can be is a female aging in public.”

As she has entered her 60s, Love she can no longer emit the primal screams that characterized her vocal performances for Hole.

“She hasn’t necessarily got the voice that she used to have when she was younger,” Hall says. “So there’s almost a different way of having to write songs, and she hasn’t necessarily got the energy that she used to. A big part of the project that was really interesting to us as well, was that there was an actual arc in the present day story, and she was creating this album, but also she’d obviously has had quite a lot of health problems going on as well. And seeing that, seeing her trying to make this album whilst also dealing with health stuff, it just gave the present-day arc. Events were unfolding for us in real time a little bit, which I think helped that spine of the film and have a bit more momentum to it than maybe in other documentaries which are just pure ‘headshots’ and you’re just being told a story. This felt like someone who was very active and who had some agency.”

Love had agency, but she’s not credited as a producer or executive producer of the film, unlike many other recent documentaries about musical artists. When we asked who had final cut on the film, the directors spoke of a collaborative spirit between filmmakers and protagonist.

“It’s really amazing for us to be so creatively aligned,” Lovelace says. “Someone the other day, a friend of mine, said, ‘Ed, what does she want to get out of the film? What’s in it for her?’ And I think they asked that thinking in the same way that often musicians create their own films as a promotional tool. And I said to them with Courtney, she cares so much about art and how art looks and feels and what it represents. Her first goal is just like, it needs to be a film that can stand up alongside good pieces of art. So that’s what she’s really passionate about.”

Lovelace adds, “In terms of final cut, weirdly, it never came to that because it felt quite like a personal sort of ‘family process,’ if that makes sense.”

Love certainly has “final cut” over her upcoming album (release date pending). The new music will also give her a chance to reshape the public perception of her as a person and artist. As she says in the film, “I got kicked out of the party and I’m coming back after a very long time.”