Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgard, Sharon Stone
In the early 1970's, at the height of the Sexual
Revolution, a film known as Deep Throat went beyond the obscurity of pornography
and became a genuine mainstream hit, making a household name of its star, Linda
Lovelace (Seyfried). However, beneath the surface, Lovelace lived a life of
fear, abuse and violence under her controlling husband Chuck Traynor
(Sarsgard).
The story of Linda Lovelace is a fascinating one that
says just as much about the times and the environment in which she lived as it
does about the woman herself. A starlet in porn with a very brief career (she
only had major appearances in two films) who later became a vocal feminist and
anti-pornography campaigner. Lovelace mostly deals with those couple of years
of her life in the porn industry and handles them well, but the film's lack of
insight into her earlier and especially her later life, mean that the film feels
rather unfinished.
On a technical level, the film mostly does a good job
capturing the period. There's archived footage of people of the era (the TV
presents us with Walter Kronkite, Johnny Carson and Richard Nixon) although the
music is a little dubious, occasionally delving into sons which sound far too
modern stylistically, although this is only a minor problem. Seyfried suits the
era perfectly on a visual level as well; stills shown in the film make her look
eerily like a young Susan Sarandon at times and makes for a great performance,
especially opposite her onscreen parents played by Sharon Stone and Robert
Patrick. Peter Sarsard also does well, but falters slightly with the more
emotional scenes.
Far from a film that glorifies pornography, Lovelace
presents a dark and harrowing tale of exploitation which, even though some
elements are only suspected to have genuinely occurred, there's at least some
basis in fact, only for the reality to be supposedly worse still than what is
shown here. The later years of Lovelace's life would be worthwhile as a film in
their own right, but with the focused shifted so specifically in this film on
the Deep Throat era, it works well enough even if it doesn't explore the
subject's life as a whole as much as it should.
Next time, a family get-together becomes a fight for
survival from masked killers in You're Next.
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