Lovelace





Directed By: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Adam Brody, Juno Temple, James Franco, Hank Azaria, and Bobby Cannavale

I'm no expert on the history of the pornographic industry, and I have no intentions of ever professing to be that.  In all honesty, I've never seen Deep Throat, and I've never gone to an adult movie theater to see a sexploitation film.  All of this old school stuff predates me.  It's simply before my time.  That being said, this doesn't mean I know nothing of the Linda Lovelace story or that I can't offer a younger perspective on her indie biopic Lovelace.  First and foremost, I can say that it's a film that needs a whole lot of work, a whole lot of work.

Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is a 21 year-old girl who just moved with her parents John and Dorothy Boreman (Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone) from New York to Florida.  After having a child out of wedlock and putting him up for adoption, the young girl is trying to enjoy her new life in the sunshine state.  Instead, she frequently clashes with her mom despite adhering to an 11:00 pm curfew she set.  While out one night with her friend Patsy (Juno Temple), Linda meets charmer Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), and sparks fly.  She likes him.  He seems to be financially stable.  Her parents think he's a lovely young man.   With all this going for Chuck, Linda soon finds herself in his arms and moving out of her parents' house.

Soon after starting to live together, Chuck and Linda get married.  From the exterior, their life looks dandy.  From the interior, however, Chuck has trapped Linda in an abusive hell.   With his restaurant business essentially becoming a brothel where the waitresses prostitute themselves to male patrons out back, Chuck and Linda begin to encounter some legal issues and eventually financial problems.  In the bedroom, Chuck teaches Linda some impressive oral skills that would satiate any man's needs.  He gets Linda to demonstrate those skills on film and uses the recording to catapult her into the pornographic industry and solve their financial woes.  He convinces Butcher Peraino (Bobby Cannavale) and Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria) to cast her in their upcoming project Deep Throat.  In this film, Linda Lovelace, the most famous porn star of all time, is born.

Lovelace could have been so much better.  Directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman turn what could have been a profoundly compelling drama into a shallow melodrama with underwhelming performances.  The directors use a nonlinear narrative that inhibits them from crescendoing Linda's abusive relationship with Chuck into a tragedy that connects with the audience on an emotional level.  It prevents them from delving into Chuck and Linda's relationship in a meaningful way and properly exploring the psychology of fear that often defines abusive relationships.  Their nonlinear narrative even makes the film choppy and sets an incoherent tone as we bounce between the glamorous Hollywood high life and the secret hell Linda endures. 

The acting in Lovelace leaves a lot to be desired.  As our titular character Linda Lovelace, Amanda Seyfried gives a decent performance.  She does capture the unease a woman must feel when being forced to perform all sorts of sexual acts with an on-looking audience of millions.  However, she somewhat underplays the torture this woman secretly endures from Chuck.  We don't get a good look at this star's psychological underpinnings.  If her performance here is any indication, Seyfried is certainly seems to have trouble with finding the right roles.  A film like Les Misérables is few and far between the likes of Gone, Red Riding Hood, and Lovelace for this talented actress.  For his part as Linda’s husband Chuck Traynor, Peter Sarsgaard fumbles the biggest opportunity of all.  He portrays the darkest, most interesting character in the film and only gives a caricature of him.  Sarsgaard doesn't go deep enough in this performance, and his portrayal of Traynor suffers.  Finally, I must note that Sharon Stone is terrible as Linda's mother Dorothy.  At this point in her career, she might want to consider just retiring from the acting game.

If I were behind the camera for Lovelace, I would have done things in an entirely different manner.  A standard biopic with a straightforward narrative would have made a tremendous difference here though it can't remedy the poor acting from Epstein and Friedman’s cast.  Lovelace gets a 0.09% rating.  Have a few Cosmos with this one.