Lovelace Fails at Liberating Role

Carol Bowditch checked out Amanda Seyfried’s rockin boobies:

I included Lovelace on a whim within my selection of highlights for The Sydney Film Festival as I thought it would be a tounge-in-cheek story (pun intended) about blowjobs, featuring Amanda Seyfried’s perfect body, set in a lush 70’s backdrop. The film had those things, but wasn’t it supposed to be about Linda Lovelace’s female liberation as well?

The narrative begins with Linda as a girl-next-door type, who gets scalded by her mother for sunbathing in a swimsuit. She befriends an older man, Chuck Traynor (played by the handsome Peter Sarsgaard), that she meets at the rollerdisco while go-go dancing with her rebellious friend. She is charmed by Chuck, he brings her into his world, their relationship is humble at first, the video of them cartwheeling at the beach on sun-drenched film is picture perfect. But Chuck as a businessman sees Linda as a valuable asset, and introduces her to the world of pornography. The relationship sours as Linda is forced to act on his demands, often ending in violence, or rape.

The film plays up her doe-eyed, passive vulnerability, and there is only about three scenes were she evokes any sort of Xena Warrior Princess-like mentality. And even then, in one of these three scenes she is wearing a modest, yet completely sheer gown and curtsying to a crowd of mostly men who just enjoyed watching her performing deep throat in her feature film of the same name.  The final fifteen minutes of screentime, where she has disbanded from being Traynor’s sexy ragdoll and tells of the tough times in her book years later, seems clumsily crowbarred in to tie the piece together.

Often, her face is deadpan and eyes lifeless, she may be crying but there is just nothing there that makes me feel like I can empathise, perhaps it is unrelatability, but perhaps the edgy role was just not suited for the dollface of Seyfried.

Lovelace hits cinemas in August.

Words by Carol Bowditch.