Lovelace

An impressive cast lending their talents to a fascinating story, Lovelace brings Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Chris Noth, Adam Brody, James Franco and Eric Roberts together to portray characters in the life of Linda Lovelace, a one-shot porn actress that made headlines back in 1972 as star of the blue movie, Deep Throat.

Amanda Seyfried plays Linda, a shy and fairly innocent young girl who falls for Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard) , a mostly manipulative manager/pimp that eventually becomes Linda's husband. Lovelace begins shortly before Linda meets Chuck and establishes Linda's home life with her parents (played by Robert Patrick and an unrecognizable Sharon Stone).

We first meet Chuck as he lays eyes on Linda at a roller skating rink where Linda does an impromptu dance in front of the live band. Chuck woos the younger Linda using his charm and the alluring freedom of his adult lifestyle to eventually bring Linda to a point where she moves out of her home.

The inexperienced Linda is comfortable enough to have Chuck film her giving him oral pleasure and Chuck takes his Super 8 home movie to Butchie Peraino and Gerry Damiano (Bobby Cannavale and Hank Azaria) who are so enthralled with Linda's oral sex talents that they immediately get producer Anthony Romano to provide the funds to make a film that will eventually become Deep Throat.

We get a few topless scenes of Seyfried emulating the famous porn star of the era and enjoying her fame until everything falls like a house of cards due to Chucks violent manner and his insistence that Linda have sex with multiple partners for the purposes of his own financial gain and notoriety.

The film takes us beyond the filming of Deep Throat and we watch as Linda copes with how the film put a strain on the relationship with her parents and through her book deal and talk show circuit appearances where she vehemently denounced pornography.

Laden with a talented cast, Lovelace fails to either have audiences find fault or fall in love with our title character. Everyone in the production come across as characters rather than actual people so it is hard for a viewing audience to attach themselves – good or bad – to any of the competent actors that make up the casting call.

Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman simply don't chisel away at the inner character or either Chuck or Linda with enough feeling to make this a well rounded bio-pic. Instead, it flat-lines with any pulse and does nothing more that attempt to be an exploitation flick about an exploitation flick. Even as the time is captured fairly well in the styles and moods of the early 70's, it ultimately fails in capturing much of anything else including our attention.

The final title cards might have been the most interesting revelations of the entire films. That Linda Lovelace died from injuries suffered in a car accident at age 53. That Chuck Traynor went on to marry another famous actress in the porn industry in his nuptials to Marilyn Chambers. And how the movie Deep Throat went on to become the most successful porn film of all-time raking in hundreds of millions while Linda collected less than $2,000 for her starring role.

If you have always been interested with the film Deep Throat or the incredible life of Linda Lovelace, you may want to seek out any of the documentaries or A&E specials on the topic. Because Lovelace will just leave you superficially satisfied.

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Lovelace is an odd film in that it's really two films wrapped into one. The first film is a rather light 70s set piece about the porn business very reminiscent of the film Boogie Nights, with great performances by Mama Mia's Amanda Seyfried (holding her own even though she is much too pretty to play Linda Lovelace) as well as Peter Sarsgaard as her creepy husband who has no qualms about prostituting his wife out for a buck. Sharon Stone is just fantastic as Linda's mother (you won't even recognize her) and Robert Patrick (of Terminator 2) as her father, and the supporting cast is also perfect, including Boardwalk Empire's Bobby Cannavale and even James Franco playing Hugh Hefner. There is a bit of foreshadowing about what the second film is going to be about, such as when Linda's co-star alludes to the bruises on Linda's leg and also some questionable looks by her husband, but otherwise the movie plays out as a strongly R-rated biopic delivering quite a few laughs.

Then, suddenly, we are thrown into the second film, a PG-13 Lifetime Network-like drama including violins playing. The second film retells the first film, showing the behind the scenes abuse Linda receives from her husband and portraying Linda as someone who is doing it all reluctantly and is trying to escape the porn business. The stark contrast between the second and first films would be more effective if the second film wasn't so formulaic--it even has a gift wrapped happy ending. I imagine the truth of Linda's life falls somewhere in the middle, with Linda's own bad judgment playing at least some part in her life's situation. Unfortunately, although Amanda Seyfried is lovely in the first film as the naive young newlywed getting caught up in the porn business, she isn't reinvented and just doesn't transcend in the more watered down drama of second film like, say, Charlize Theron was in the film Monster. There just aren't any great performance by anyone in the second film as a matter of fact and the scenes that are suppose to be brutal just aren't. When it comes to showing the ugly side of the porn biz this film peters out.

Lovelace, therefore, stands as a slightly above average and obviously heavily fictionalized biopic, when it could and should have been much more, if only some more guts were put into the second half of it.

Directed by the team of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, "Lovelace" is a short and not-so-sweet Hollywoodization of the real-life story of Linda Boreman, a.k.a. adult movie sensation Linda Lovelace. At 21 years old, she's living with her uptight parents (Robert Patrick and an unrecognizable Sharon Stone) when she meets charming stranger Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard). He's actually a pretty sleazy guy who finagles her into a job in porn films, specifically the landmark effort "Deep Throat". He also turns out to be an abusive monster, whose atrocities were recounted by Linda in her book "Ordeal".

With these Hollywood versions of such stories, it's always advisable to take them with a grain of salt. For one thing, even this viewer, who's not particularly knowledgeable about the adult film industry, knows full well that Linda did a fair bit more than just that one classic. "Lovelace" the movie actually leaves out some things to focus on limited story threads. The filmmakers try to be clever with their narrative by jumping back and forth in time, but this could only be confusing for some in the audience.

It's worth a look just to watch Epstein, Friedman, and company give us a look into the porn filmmaking scene in the 1970s. Time and place are well captured, but the soundtrack tends to get annoying; we don't need these constant reminders of when the story largely takes place. The film IS very slick, and makes its points in approximately an hour and a half, so it doesn't overstay its welcome.

The strength lies in the talents of the ensemble cast. Amanda Seyfried is appealing as the not-so-innocent but still endearing Linda, while Sarsgaard, no stranger to creepy roles, is convincing as the slime ball husband. Stone gives a creditable performance in a severely deglamourized role, and Adam Brody is a hoot as porn legend Harry Reems. James Franco is charisma-free and miscast as Hugh Hefner.

There is enough compelling material here for one to realize that a more in-depth recounting of the tale would be appreciated.

Six out of 10.

Andy Bellin wrote the screenplay for this biopic-type film directed by both Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman which relates the life of Linda Lovelace, known as the queen of adult porn for her controversial role in the 1972 film DEEP THROAT and the writer of the confessional book ORDEAL which gave the public the 'real story' behind the girl who was Lovelace before she died in 2002 - the girl who is used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her coercive husband, before taking control of her life. The film is basically divided into two parts - the fantastical story of a freckled face 'innocent' girl of strict upbringing who rises to fame by being the first porn star to perform fellatio on the screen and gained fame and stardom, and the second part of how this naïve girl was the victim of the abusive husband and porn industry until she gained the courage to marry and have a family and step out of the spotlight of her fame in Deep Throat.

And the manner in which the two views on the same girl are interconnected in the film is the strong point of the movie: the technique of show 'reality' while simultaneously depicting 'fiction' works well. The cast is strong: Amanda Seyfried does a star turn as Linda Lovelace (aka Linda Susan Boreman aka Mrs. Larry Marchiano) though much of Lovelace's life is omitted (her liver transplant, her messy divorces, her other films, etc); Peter Sarsgaard is excellent as the smarmy drug-addled Chuck Traynor, the man who convinced Lovelace to enter porn; Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick as her rigid parents; Juno Temple in the thankless role as Lovelace's only friend Patsy; and the porn guys - Chris Noth, Bobby Cannavale, Hank Azaria, Adam Brody as the well-endowed Harry Reems (though that of course is never filmed), Chloë Sevigny as a Feminist Journalist, James Franco as Hugh Hefner, fellow porn star Dolly as portrayed well by Debi Mazar, Wes Bentley, Eric Roberts, and Ron Pritchard as Sammy Davis Jr.! There are real taped interviews and comments by Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Walter Cronkite which enhance the credibility.

The film closes with an interview after Lovelace has revealed her past in her best selling book ORDEAL - and at that point the film slides down the hill of Hallmark type feel good. An entertaining film about a name from the 20th century that deserves visiting despite the fact that it simply goes on too long.

Grady Harp

The general quality of both the acting and cinematography is fair to middlin', nothing spectacular. Juno Temple, Sharon Stone, and Robert Patrick, however, all give notable performances as, respectively, Linda's buddy and her cold, distant, puritanical parents. LOVELACE captures the atmosphere of the '70s pretty decently. The story's broken up, and some of the time-lapses are quite jarring. Still, the flashbacks do allow for some elements of surprise if you're not already familiar with the details of Linda's life (as I wasn't).

The end of the film is what really redeems it. LOVELACE's best single aspect is its portrayal of the porno film industry and how the exploitation often goes much deeper than simply pressuring naive young ladies into being filmed doing things they loathe doing. There are, of course, many sides to any story: Some will like the slant LOVELACE takes; others inevitably won't. The makers of this film may have gone a bit too far in portraying Linda Boreman/Lovelace as a completely innocent girl-next-door who just happened to fall in with the wrong guy and his crowd, but I can see how that was hard to avoid.

Considering the subject matter, there is very little graphic sex/nudity, and it was obviously wise to avoid making an admonitory bio-drama about a porn star into a porno film in its own right.