A documentary by Sophie Fiennes. In English and French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable

Like its subject, this profile of Grace Jones in winter is demanding, idiosyncratic, and worth surrendering to for the greater good. It is also rambling and frustratingly incomplete—even if it’s hard to imagine how her complete story could be contained in a paltry two hours.

Collected and edited over a 10-year period by British docmaker Sophie Fiennes (sister of Ralph and Joseph), Grace Jones finds the singer and fashion icon reviving her brand of good-humoured hauteur with virtually no loss in pungency. By spending so much time with Jones in settings both deeply intimate and gloriously public, the movie makes the case that her ascension for decades was no right place, right time fluke.

The film celebrates her long career as a top model, actor, video pioneer, and writer or cowriter and -producer of tunes as indelible as “My Jamaican Guy”, “Nipple to the Bottle”, and “Pull Up to the Bumper”. A restless self-inventor, she has also stitched together disco, hard rock, reggae, new wave, French chanson, and modern art song through sheer force of personality. In fact, it seems almost criminal that she is regarded by some as a 1980s novelty act when her ambition, talent, and skill at self-invention should actually put her on a level with Madonna or David Bowie.

Certainly, the performances seen here, mostly from a concert in Dublin, show Jones still strong in style, voice, and room-filling charisma. (The hats alone are worth the price of admission.) These are balanced by visits to London, Tokyo, Moscow, and, most revealingly, what’s left of her family in Jamaica, where she was abused by a literally Bible-thumping stepgrandfather, and is seen recording an album with rhythm masters Sly & Robbie.

There are also several trips to Paris, where she takes her teenage son to his father, fashion photographer Jean-Paul Goude. None of this background is provided or explained in the film. (The subtitle Bloodlight and Bami refers, obscurely, to the red studio light and a kind of Jamaican flatbread.) There are no archival clips or even identifying title cards, so viewers are thrown in the deep end with a surprisingly vulnerable, if sometimes imperious, Ms. Jones. Slipping in and out of languages and accents to suit the place and time, she provides some interesting insights regarding her dedication to performance. She finds the stage “a fascinating, lonely place”, and has yet to tire of it. Grace Jones turns 70 next month.