As it so happens, many, many years ago in
college, I read both of Linda Lovelace's books Out of Bondage
and Ordeal. Let me tell you , while Steven King might've
been the king of horror in the mid 80's when these books were
released, I don't know if they held a candle to the tales that
Linda Lovelace was weaving in these harrowing
biographies. Still can't shake them all these years
later. I guess the only real surprise is that it's taken
the powers that be this long to finally roll around with a
Lovelace biopic, one of the issues I've read has always been
trying to find someone to actually play Linda Lovelace.
Well, we finally have that biopic and we have the lovely
Amanda Seyfried in the lead. We'll get around to
discussing that in a bit, but the movie itself… eh… It was
okay.
Linda Boreman (Seyfreid) seemed like a nice enough kid.
Being a young woman in the free and easy early seventies,
we're given some insight into some slight missteps the young
woman has taken, which is one of the reasons her mother
Dorothy (Sharon Stone) is so strict with her. Even
though she's in her twenties. Then one day Linda meets
the super smooth, super suave Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard)
who takes her away from all of these oppressive
restrictions. Now while I have no idea what the real
Chuck Traynor was like, there is something inherently creepy
about Peter Sarsgaard which flies totally in the face of super
smooth and suave, so that was the first pill we had to swallow
to buy into the film.
At first, everything with the new Traynor union seemed all
good for Linda, though Chuck often warned her not to question
him on his business, whatever this business was. Then we
see Linda having to bail Chuck out of jail and now the
Traynor's have money problems and now Chuck needs Linda to
bail him out of his money problems. Director's Rob
Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman play with the timeline a bit, so
things appear to play out just swell and then we back track to
see how things really were behind the scenes.
For instance, Chuck arranges a meeting with
pornographers Butchy Peraino (Bobby Cannavale) and Gerard
Damiano (Hank Azaria) to try to get Linda cast in one of their
films. They aren't interested since Linda isn't really
much of a looker… more on that later… but Chuck points out
that Linda does have a specialized skill that might be of use
for their particular business. Duh. And the
international sensation that would change the adult film
industry, 'Deep Throat' is born. Now knowing Linda as we
do, at least to this point, she didn't seem like the kind of
person who would willingly walk into a pornographers office,
then willing to walk onto a film set and perform pornographic
acts, but then we back track and see how Chuck 'convinced'
her, basically starting with their wedding night, into doing
whatever he wanted her to do.
Yes, 'Deep Throat' apparently was a cultural phenomenon back
in the early seventies, it played in major theaters, Johnny
Carson joked about it, Linda was the toast of the town and got
to travel around the nation and even was the special guest of
one Hugh Hefner (James Franco), but the abuse never
stopped. One can only take so much for so long and
fearing for her life, Linda Lovelace was able to free herself
from the clutches of Chuck Traynor and subsequently the
X-rated career of one Linda Lovelace mercifully came to an
end, and boy… would she have some stories to tell.
We did have some issues with 'Lovelace' one being Amanda
Seyfried in the lead who might've been a touch miscast.
Now don't get me wrong here as Ms. Seyfried is a fine young
actress and there was nothing particularly wrong with how she
portrayed Linda Lovelace, it's simply a matter of
appearance. The real Linda Lovelace was no beauty and
had a bit of a hard edge to her, thus when the pornographers
were protesting about casting her in their movie, we could buy
that in reality. But in a reality where someone who
looks like Amanda Seyfried walks into your porno office, soft,
demure, cute and adorable… in addition to some other things
she brings to the table… we don't buy into that anymore.
So two things have happened to this movie watcher already, one
being we are having difficulty accepting Peter Sargaard as a
smooth operator and two, we are also having difficulty buying
into Amanda Seyfried as a pornstar whose only appeal is the
ability to deep throat.
Then we have the issue of the horror that Linda Lovelace
suffered through. Since we've read the books we know how
horrible, at least according to the author, it was for
her. This movie tones down the horror from the books
from a level of absolute horrible degradation and humiliation,
to just really messed up. That's a significant
alteration. I do understand that trying to dramatize all
of the hell that Lovelace wrote about would make this movie
worse than all the 'Saw' movies combined, and I'm not trying
to downplay what was shown in the film, but there was a lot
more… I feel… the filmmakers could've done to truly immerse
the audience into the tragedy that Lovelace wrote about in her
books.
Still, 'Lovelace' isn't a bad film. I might not have
brought into Amanda Seyfried as Linda Lovelace, but I did buy
into her as an abused character in this movie. The film
is interesting and entertaining to watch and it does open with
'I've Got to use My Imagination' by Gladys Knight and the
Pips, arguably the greatest song ever committed to
vinyl. If you were to ask me. There were solid
performances all around, especially from a near unrecognizable
Sharon Stone, and the movie felt completely authentic for the
time period. I just had the feeling that 'Lovelace'
wasn't prepared to commit itself completely to its subject
matter. I can understand why, but I'm still a little
disappointed by it.
