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Peter Sarsgaard tickles Amanda Seyfried's tonsils in Lovelace (2013).
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At a glance:
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| The real Linda Lovelace. |
How far does a girl have to go to untangle her tingle, asks the poster for
Deep Throat (1972), the purported most profitable indie flick of all time at some $600m (
not accordin to the mob who funded it), out of which tragic starlet
Linda Lovelace received none of the US$1250 owed to her. I wish I were livin in those pre-Internet days to experience fuck flicks at standalone cinema wankathons, at least once in my life. If I did, I wish I got to know Linda Susan Boreman, the unassumin Florida schoolgirl turned world famous porn star, often credited as bringing adult entertainment into the forefront of mainstream attention. This very sympathetic and one-sided Andy Bellin / W. Merritt Johnson treatment is a biopic based on Eric Danville's 2001 book
The Complete Linda Lovelace, focusin on how the lass escapes her religious mother (
Sharon Stone) to meet and marry the charismatic hustler Chuck
Traynor (
Peter Sarsgaard) who would end up bein her papa pimp and punisher. Who would've thought that Linda's impressive capacity for fellatio would send her up the dizzyin heights of international superstardom and then down so far to the lowest levels of human depravity?
Lovelace (2013) is a movie I was excited to read about and I wanted to like.
Bad news on the doorstep:
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| Juno Temple would've been my top choice for Linda. |
Dirty beauties
Juno Temple and
Chloe Sevigny both have small roles in this and I wish either of them had landed the leadin part instead. Was
Amanda Seyfried cast because of her freckles and her 60s style, upside-down heart-shaped tits? I read that
Kate Hudson was first choice! What a disaster that would've been. Far more critical than that, of course, is how easily the picture goes down, when contrasted against the cultural significance of its characters. I'm talkin about how it
"reduces an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes" and how
"this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried while making '70s porn look scarcely more sleazy than a movie-of-the-week melodrama from the period", accordin to Rob Nelson for Variety. Sarsgaard and
Adam Brody especially give some layered, highly watchable performances but the way all the characters enter and exit the proceedings, e.g.
Playboy legend
Hugh Hefner played by
James Franco, simply devalues the explosive subject matter. Not only is the camerawork rather static, the characterisation makes caricatures out of everyone and many potentially powerful scenes lose their emotional gravitas, e.g. Dad (
Robert Patrick) talkin to his little girl on the phone about how he had to walk out of the cinema, and Linda survivin a beatin in the streets only to be rescued by cops who were more interested in gettin her autograph.
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| Well, at least the retro typeset and production design was spot on. |
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| James Franco's pipe-wielding Hugh Hefner! |
Perennial wonderment:
Will we ever find out how much the movie actually made? Did
Hugh Hefner really get a blowjob from Linda and was he really a sympathetic figure who wanted her to be a legitimate movie star? Was Linda actually a pathological liar and used everyone, just as much as they used her? It would've been nice to at least cover the other angle about how she felt the anti-porno movement also manipulated her durin her last days.
Reminds me of:
The wonderfully depressin biopics
Auto Focus (2002) about
Bob Crane and
What's Love Got To Do With It (1993) about
Tina Turner - both of which are vastly more resonant and wholly entertainin than this one.
I can't remember if I cried:
When it stopped at 92 minutes. What kind of self-respectin biopic has such a short runtime? No wonder everythin seems rushed!
Most memorable line:
Chuck says:
"No, Linda, it's Shakespeare. I told them you do a great English accent, particularly with a cock down your throat."
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| Innit sad that a movie so big gave so little to Linda?
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Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
Total Film's Kate Sables notes that for a movie obsessed with truth-tellin, Lovelace
"ignores the competing accounts of its heroine’s porno past, privileging only her own version". Another online comment dismisses
Lovelace as
"nothing more than a by-the-numbers, woman empowerment,
Lifetime channel Movie Of The Week…with nudity". I do feel it's not very tender and disappointingly mediocre. For a more academic view on the topic, check out the 2005 documentary
Inside Deep Throat. By the way, does anyone know what happened to that other
Linda Lovelace story that was supposed to be out this year,
Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story (2013), starrin
Malin Akerman and
Sasha Grey? I read that
Lindsay Lohan was supposed to be the lead. Oh well, meanwhile I'll have to check out
Paul Schrader's
The Canyons to see how LiLo is doin.
★★1/2
The day the music died:
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R.I.P. Linda "Lovelace" Boreman (26 Jan 1949 - 22 Apr 2002)
and Charles Everett "Chuck" Traynor (21 Aug 1937 - 22 July 2002) |
Bonus material:
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Some of them like to use you, some of them like to be of use.
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Happier times.
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| Adam Brody as Harry Reems and Amanda Seyfried as Linda Lovelace. |
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| Never get high on your own supply, Harry. |
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| Sharon Stone delivers whatever she could as the conflicted mother. |
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Too cute, really.
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