REVIEW - LOVELACE

A title needn't mean much. A title probably oughtn't to be relevant to one's experience when watching a film. A title can, however, provide an insight into the intentions of the filmmakers, or at least those who devised and/or approved the title. Lovelace is the true story of a matter of months in a young woman's life. Its title, simply 'Lovelace', implies a biopic / expose, a glimpse behind the (meat) curtains at, as an early line of dialogue explicitly states, 'who the real Linda Lovelace is'. The screenplay is a connect-the-dots of important moments in Linda Lovelace's life before and after the filming of Deep Throat, condensed, smoothed out, glitzed up, muggle moments. A cast of familiar actors, who perhaps thought they were starring in a porn version of The Aviator, queue up for their 15 seconds of screentime (or fewer, in Chloe Sevigny's case), playing important figures in her life during this period. And, in only 90 minutes, there's no time for anyone to invest much character or realism in the script, nor time for anyone to flesh these characters out beyond much more than one-note caricatures. That's particularly unforgivable as this is, of course, a true story, so you can be sure that every one of these people was once (and many probably still are) as complex as you or I, or even more so. By the sheer fact that they're most often in front of the camera lens, Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard are the film's most vivid presences, and Sharon Stone is memorable as Linda's miserable mother. Stephen Trask's seductive score is the best thing about the film. The worst thing about the film is its laughable prudishness, with its cartoonish, finger-wagging attitude toward the porn industry and its conservative depiction of sex and nudity. It says rather a lot that, 41 years on, and we've 'progressed' from on-screen cumshots to a film that recoils from the slightest hint of pubic hair. The moral is this: do blowjobs and you'll get beaten up. Live a nice, law-abiding life as an honest, upstanding American and start a nice, white nuclear family, and you'll receive lifelong happiness.