Fine performances and sharp attention to period detail are not enough to save Lovelace from the doldrums of mediocre biopic filmmaking.
From Cinelinx:
Lovelace is a strong indictment of the pornography industry and a personal story of one woman’s triumph over domestic abuse. Amanda Seyfried is outstanding as Linda Boreman, who became famous as Linda Lovelace, the star of Deep Throat, the first pornographic film to go “mainstream.” While the film highlights just how popular the film was back then (Johnny Carson is even shown in archival footage talking about it), the truth wasn’t quite so glamorous.
Lovelace examines roughly ten years of Linda Lovelace's (Amanda Seyfried) life, beginning in 1970, two years before she would appear in the infamous Deep Throat. As far as names that have made it into the public lexicon, hers is among the few that have gained a special notoriety -- first for her starring role in one of the adult film industry's most sensational pictures, and then for the 20 years she spent speaking out against spousal abuse. This film takes an uncompromising, and at times unnerving, look at her life and attempts to reconcile how the same person can end up in these two very different roles.
TF:
Released from strict religious parents (an unrecognisable Sharon Stone as Mum) by marriage to blustering pimp Chuck Traynor (a swaggering Peter Sarsgaard), naïve teenager Linda (Amanda Seyfried, artless and utterly charming) flowers sexually.
Traynor parlays her ‘speciality’ into Mafia-backed porn stardom: Linda’s role in carnal comedy Deep Throat (1972) turns her into a media sensation... then the movie pulls its big stunt – rewinding, Rashômon- style, to show us the private pain under the public story.
Choked, raped, and violently coerced by an increasingly jealous Traynor, it becomes clear that Linda isn’t a poster girl for sexual liberation. She’s a sex puppet, determined to quit an abusive marriage.
Sarsgaard gives a deftly multi-layered performance, showing the fear fuelling his rages, as the superb seyfried reveals raw emotions past roles never hinted at.
Despite some crafty cameos (Robert Patrick as Seyfried’s repressed father, Chris Noth as a steely movie mogul), none of the other performances register deeply.
And at a skinny 92 minutes, stray scenes suggest Epstein and Friedman axed a strand about Deep Throat’s cultural impact to concentrate on the central relationship.
Worryingly, for a movie obsessed with truth-telling, Lovelace also ignores the competing accounts of its heroine’s porno past, privileging only her own version.
