Narrated by Scarlett Johansson, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg begins with a declaration: “I’ve been called a witch, a slut, a murderer.” The documentary, a project initiated by Pallenberg’s children, is an attempt to change the story. And telling it in her words also finally clarifies the true nature of the relationship between Pallenberg and Mick Jagger.
Pallenberg, who was in a relationship with Brian Jones for two years and then with Keith Richards for 13, made the Rolling Stones, Britain’s premier bad boys, seem like a bunch of preening youths by comparison. Richards says of his former partner, also the mother of his two eldest children, Marlon and Angela: “She scared the pants off me.” Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill’s engrossing documentary
