Lovelace - not as interesting as I had hoped

This is a film that got a very small release when it came out last year.  Despite starring several very well-known Holywood big names (eg Amanda Seyfried; Peter Sarsgaard) it seemed to come and go very quickly.  Only through the grace of Mark Kermode's obsession with the porn film industry did it come to my attention at all.  Lovelace tells the story of Linda Lovelace (Seyfried), star of the legendary porn movie Deep Throat.  This film shows us her upbringing, how she become involved in the porn industry and then how that industry chewed her up and spat her out when she was no longer required.

Watching all this prompted me to look up the real Linda Lovelace, because at the end I wasn't really sure how much of what I was told was real.  The film breaks itself into two parts, each of which tells the story of Lovelace's time in the porn industry quite differently.  Firstly we see her having a great time and been sexually liberated, the second time we see her forced into doing things she doesn't want to and beaten up for her trouble.  This mirrors the way that the real life Linda Lovelace appears to have changed her mind about those experiences as she got further away from them.  Lovelace seems to have initially bragged about her time in the industry, then at various times afterwards has campaigned against the porn industry and made accusations that she was abused within it.  It seems that no one really knows which version of Linda Lovelace's story to believe.

In that sense this is a film that sums Linda Lovelace up extremely well.  The film gives you a lot of the stories that surrounded her, her life and her times without telling you exactly what to believe.  It's all sort of interesting, but I'm not that interested really so I can't sit here giving it a glowing recommendation.  I'm sure that anyone sufficiently interested in her story has already seen this film or read so much about her that there's nothing new for them here.  I wish that there had been more in the film that told me about the randomness with which Lovelace lived her life after finishing with the porn industry, since having read about all that in Wikipedia now it sounds much more interesting.  Having seen Lovelace I now see why it didn't get a bigger release - it just isn't that interesting a film.

One last thing, I dare you to watch this film and work out who is playing Linda's mother.  I will be very impressed if you can can.  The actress is utterly unrecognisable from her more well-known roles and when I looked at the cast list after watching the film I could hardly believe it.  I guess make-up, age and costume make a huge difference!