Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg in Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (Magnolia Pictures)

“I’ve been called a witch, a slut, and a murderer.” Well, she was at least a handful. We only need to look at a picture of the young, grinning, and rakishly sexy Anita Pallenberg to see trouble coming. Girlfriend of Rolling Stone member Keith Richards, the onetime model and starlet established herself as a style icon and a symbol of 1960s born-to-be-wild madness, for better or worse. Catching Fire: The Anita Pallenberg Story follows a sanitizing redemption arc for its antiheroine, but it’s hard not to shake your head at the bonfires of drugs and disaster that ravaged Pallenberg’s life and lives around her. Hopefully getting to shag not just one but three of the most delectable Stones made up for some of the heat along the way.

The documentary immediately sacrifices grit for contemporary star power with the choice of Scarlett Johansson to narrate Pallenberg’s interviews, papers, and diaries. German and Italian, Pallenberg boasted an alluring Euro accent in occasional clips. Johansson comes off a bit all-American Valley Girl recounting the subject’s exciting highs and miserable lows.

But there’s no resisting Pallenberg’s charisma in early stills and footage. The slender, lively girl with the broad grin rebelled against a stifling background to model and join the bohemian 1960s scene in New York. She charmed Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, and casting directors, appearing in European art films and the camp classic Barbarella. She also caught the eye of rock stars. Pallenberg entered a relationship with Brian Jones, the most stylish Rolling Stone of them all, a liaison that turned abusive fast as Jones blew his talent on drugs and booze. Talking heads cluck approvingly that Anita hit back as hard as she got, but the setup still doesn’t sound like much fun.

Rock and Stones fans know the story of how Richards stole Pallenberg out from under Jones’s nose in Morocco, setting the stage for a long relationship (and according to some, for Jones’s death). Film from the early days of the Richards-Pallenberg affair looks burnished and beautiful. A more tender side of the famously tough Stone emerges in a voice-over as he shares, “I was just bursting in love.” She in turn praises his affection and loyalty. The two seem made for each other.

Except, as we know, the picture grows darker. Pallenberg’s friends and cinema colleagues portray her over and over as an independent woman. But by her late twenties, she was hooked on heroin, forbidden to work by Richards, and running from the taxman and the cops. A misbegotten affair with Jagger on the set of the film Performance seemed undertaken more out of contempt than anything else. Children complicated the picture. The film trumpets Pallenberg’s no-nonsense care, and the two grown children she had with Richards interviewed on camera seem level-headed and smart. However, some of her maternal ministrations did not turn out well. We are startled but not surprised when a tragic incident involving Pallenberg comes later in the movie. The filmmakers gloss over it, but it’s a shocker.

Catching Fire happily basks in its last act, when Pallenberg finally gets clean, embarks on a design career, and becomes a buddy to celebrities like Kate Moss. The charisma shines on in that famous grin before Pallenberg’s hepatitis death in 2017. Though viewers will be glad she pulled it together, some of us would have liked her story to really let Pallenberg be Pallenberg—mad, bad, and dangerous to know.