Animus Films, Eclectic Pictures, Millennium Films,
Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Noth, Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Adam Brody, Juno Temple, James Franco, Eric Roberts
Obviously based on the 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, this is the story of Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) and her life, mostly in her short lived porn career. Linda was married to Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) who allegedly abused her, forced her into prostitution and a porn career. Linda grew up in a highly religious and very strict home, and once she got out she went a bit overboard. She later made lots of claims that this movie investigates. A dramatized documentary of her life is what we have here. It’s debatable whether it’s all true or not, but it is her side of the story. No doubt, she did live a difficult life, that’s for sure.
This is not a really great documentary. I suspect it went through a lot of difficulty before it got made, and though there’s some big names in it, I’m not sure it’s really all that accurate. It’s titillating for sure, and the Deep Throat phenomenon was a really big deal at the time when it came out. I know everyone was talking about it, and since I was just a youngster at the time, I knew about it, but didn’t really know what it was all about. I still have never seen the film, as it’s probably so dated now that everyone’s pretty much talking about it. Porn was really back room stuff in those days, and this was the first film that ever made it into mainstream culture. People from all levels of society were talking about this film, but though the porn moguls (mostly really slimy guys) thought that they were going to break into the mainstream, it never happened. The public quickly figured out that there was no worthwhile story involved, and the hard to watch stuff got really old really fast. Once they’ve seen it, there was nothing new. Though they tried to top themselves, they quickly got turned by quick profits and shoddy product. There wasn’t a market for explicit mainstream films, and if anything, American films have gotten tamer rather than racier in recent years. Filmmakers quickly learned that X, NC-17, and many times even R ratings will kill a movie’s profits. They cut and cut to get a PG-13 at all costs. This movie is not really about the movie, it’s about the weird relationship of Linda herself, and it left me feeling like I was watching that Dorothy Stratten movie and I expected Chuck to kill her in the end. But this doesn’t go to the end. It pretty much ends with Linda’s foray into feminist anti-porn. All in all I didn’t find this film very interesting, and I am pretty sure this will be a curiosity movie that ends up in the 99 cent store bargain bin. This is a bit of a train wreck, just like her life was, so we should have someone standing outside saying “Move along, move along, there’s nothing to see here, move along!”
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
