LOVELACE (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman). 92 minutes. Opens Friday (August 9). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN
Lazily recreating the sensational story familiar to vintage porn buffs, this stilted biopic about Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace is only skin deep.
In a role once meant for Lindsay Lohan (whose talent is probably more in tune with the film), Amanda Seyfried gives her all as the suburban girl who escapes the clutches of her über-Christian mom (an unrecognizable Sharon Stone) and takes the lead in the adult film that revolutionized the porn industry.
Boasting comic wit and its star’s exceptional oral talent, Deep Throat was a countercultural phenomenon that made the Mob rich and Lovelace so infamous that she captured the attention of Johnny Carson and Hugh Hefner (James Franco at his hammiest).
After skimming such basics, the film jumps ahead in time to an older, reformed Linda, now submitting to a polygraph test for the publishers of her tell-all biography, Ordeal. This becomes a framing device to revisit the same story behind Deep Throat from her perspective, revealing horrifying details regarding the abuse she endured at the hands of her husband and pimp, Chuck Traynor (an effectively sleazy Peter Sarsgaard).
The structure sets up a “he said/she said” dynamic, just one example of how the noncommittal film plays it safe, separating Lovelace’s version of events – she claims to have made Deep Throat at gunpoint – from agreed-upon facts, which creates a distance between the film’s perspective and that of its subject.
Apparently the filmmakers think her story is good enough to be exploited, again, but identifying with her would be too much to swallow.
