Starring Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard
Directed by Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
It seems that you can remove filmmakers from the realms of documentary but you cant ask them to stop using talking heads to get the heart of their subjects. Such is the case with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk), who lean heavily on uninspired interview sequences in their biopic of 70s porn star Linda Lovelace. Alas, the simple concept of show, dont tell seems completely lost on them.
Barraged by reporters questions outside a glitzy Deep Throat screening in 1972, Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried, still incapable of conveying hidden depths) is sent down memory lane. Only a few years earlier, she was Linda Boreman, a suburban girl seduced by hustler Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) and coerced into committing her fellatio skills to film. Soon cutting ahead to 1980, we find a remarried Linda Marchiano hooked up to a polygraph, eager to tell the awful truth about what really happened.
This proves terribly problematic, as it forces viewers to suffer through variations of the middling scenes theyve just endured. Furthermore, none of the revelations will surprise anyone with a passing familiarity of Lindas story. Whats genuinely shocking are the details that are omitted, including forced bestiality and the fact she eventually returned to photo spreads. Frustratingly, Lovelace seems all too willing to dispense with any messy details that might meddle with its tidy empowerment arc.
If allowed to pose just one question to Epstein and Friedman, it would have to be: Whats the point of telling a story of abuse and degradation if youre going to insist on making it so palatable?
Curtis Woloschuk
