Lovelace review: Truth or dare Lovelace- Trailer The story of Linda Lovelace, who is used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her coercive husband, before taking control of her life. PT1M57S http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-2t6k1 620 349 September 5, 2013 16 votes Biopic, Drama 93 min Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman Andy Bellin Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgard, James Franco, Chloe Sevigny, Chris Noth By her account, Linda Boreman spent 17 days in total in the American pornography industry in the early 1970s. Yet she remains its most iconic figure, under the name Linda Lovelace. The trouble with telling her story is that her account of what happened often differed as she retold it. That's a major obstacle for a biopic. It becomes hard to pin down your subject. Was she exploring her own sense of freedom in early 1971 when she made Deep Throat, the most successful porn movie of all time, or was she being raped, with a virtual gun to her head, as she told an American government commission into pornography in the 1980s? Some of the participants in the few films in which she appeared have contradicted her claim that her husband, Chuck Traynor, was forcing her to do it, beating her almost daily. She was into it, they say, whatever she said later. I have to wonder: if she was that "into it," how come she only lasted 17 days? She then campaigned hard against pornography - at least until she fell out with her new feminist friends including Gloria Steinem, claiming they just wanted to exploit her, too. Lovelace might seem an odd choice for the San Francisco-based directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, but they didn't originate the project. They are to some extent directors for hire. On the other hand, in their distinguished documentary work (The Times of Harvey Milk, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, The Celluloid Closet) and in their first dramatic feature, Howl (about the poet Allen Ginsberg), they've shown a strong interest in American cultural outsiders. True, most of their films have been about gay subjects, but they have said in interviews that this project appealed partly because it's a kind of coming-out story. A shy kid from a hardline Christian family has to figure out who she is; in the process she becomes the greatest symbol of sexual liberation the world had yet seen, and a feminist heroine, the battered wife who overcomes her abuser. Exposed: Amanda Seyfried gives a wonderful performance as Linda Lovelace, the Christian girl who became a porn star. In the movie, this tension between image and reality is resolved in a novel way. For the first hour, the script is mostly linear, and familiar in its funky 1970s feel. Linda (Amanda Seyfried, looking fresh and freckled) is 19, and ready to break free from her domineering Catholic mother Dorothy (Sharon Stone, almost unrecognisable) and her distant father John (Robert Patrick). Strip club owner Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) recognises Linda's wild spirit. We can see that he's sleazy, but she can't. They're soon married, living a life that seems much freer to her. They smoke pot and he helps her overcome her sexual inhibitions, including an aversion to oral sex (seriously). None of this is depicted in great detail or with any sexual heat, but there is plenty of joy in Seyfried's performance. She's playing an innocent girl who's desperate to be liked, not quite Goldilocks but a long way from a vamp. This makes you wonder how she ends up in the New York offices of porn director Gerry Damiano (Hank Azaria) and his producer partner Butchie Peraino (Bobby Cannavale), auditioning for a porn film. They think she's nothing special until Traynor shows them a home movie. "Can she really do that?" they ask, dumbstruck. Butchie's associate, Anthony Romano (Chris Noth), coughs up $25,000 and they go to work. In the second half, the script rewinds. We see many of the same events, portrayed from her point of view. A somewhat sunny story now becomes much darker, with Traynor's threats turning to frequent violence, which he is careful to keep hidden. It's the most innovative aspect of the movie, because it makes us aware of the mechanics of story and the question of truth. We have to question what we have just seen and re-evaluate all. The problem of the film has become the solution, almost. My reservation about Lovelace is that it's finally less than it should have been. Seyfried's performance is wonderful, as is that of Sharon Stone as her mother; the drama of family is well resolved, but the filmmakers avoid most of the harder questions. They invent a way of looking at the inconsistencies in her story, then leave them hanging, in a film that becomes more conventional as it goes. There are now a hundred films about the excesses of America in the 1970s, all of them indebted to Scorsese's groundbreaking style in Goodfellas. Too much money, too many drugs, bada-bing, bada-boom, everyone dies or goes to jail. Linda Boreman's life was more complicated than what we see here, which tells me someone put the brakes on the production. Given that there are 19 producers credited, it's hard to know who did what, but the film is only diverting, when it should have been wrenching. Twitter: @ptbyrnes Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman Rated MA, 93 minutes