A film review by Craig J. Koban August 27, 2013

LOVELACE ½ 

2013, R, 92  mins.

LOVELACE tells the tumultuous story of Bronx native Linda Susan Boreman, who went on to become, of course, Linda Lovelace, one of the most famous porn actresses of the 1970’s that appeared in one of the most popular and widely seen adult films of all-time in DEEP THROAT.  The film was just 62 minutes long, shot in less than a week, and was made for peanuts with amateurish production values, but DEEP THROAT was the first porn film of its era that sought to legitimize the genre for the mainstream masses.  It went on to become a box office sensation, grossing millions of dollars and was seen by a large movie going public.  It also made Lovelace a household name. 

LOVELACE is not so much concerned with the making of DEEP THROAT as it is in dealing with the before and after tale of Lovelace’s porn life, which the film relays via thanklessly decent performance and some flawless recreations of its era.  The model turned porn actress achieved such lightning quick success and popularity that it would only seem inevitable that she would come crashing down hard.  In a bit of irony, Lovelace became a staunch anti-porn advocate after DEEP THROAT’s release.  In the 1980’s she testified before Congress that every time she was having sex in DEEP THROAT that viewers were (in her words) “watching me getting raped.”  She commented in more detail about what she felt were hellish working conditions in her tell-all 1980 autobiography ORDEAL.  She died at the relatively young age of 52 in 2002.  The inherent sadness of her story is that DEEP THROAT - a film that Lovelace was only paid $1250 to appear in - grossed a fortune and made everyone else in the production rich, leaving Lovelace an exploited martyr of sorts. 

Somewhat compellingly, screenwriter Andy Bellin opts to go for a RASHOMON effect of chronicling Lovelace’s rise and fall, showing how she came to be in DEEP THROAT and the film’s aftermath from one viewpoint and then later flashes back to showcase Lovelace’s own perspective of the events.  The idea here, I think, is to give the film a layered sense of depth to the narrative, which is inherently true, but it does provide for some jarring and odd juxtapositions of scenes.  The main events of the film occur between 1970 and 1974, during which we see Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) as she meets a man that would shape her destiny, for better and ultimately for worse, Chuck Traynor (played with reptilian scuzziness by Peter Sarsgaard), who initially became her manager and then, for lack of a better description, her abusive pimp. 

The opening scenes of the film have the most hypnotic allure, as we see Boreman as a Florida-residing teen that’s essentially dominated by her ultra-strict mother (a gritty and never-been-better Sharon Stone) and her retired-cop father (an equally solid Robert Patrick).  The fascination of these introductory moments is in seeing Traynor go in for the seductive kill and lure the relatively bright-eyed, naïve, and plucky Boreman into his fold.  He does manage to steal her away from her domineering – but well-meaning – parents, marries her, and then has aspirations of turning her into a mega-star.  Some of Traynor’s early efforts of putting his wife on film gets the attention of a group of porn makers, Anthony Romano (Chris Noth), Butchie Peraino (Bobby Cannavale) and Gerry Damiano (Hank Azaria), which ultimately leads to the production of DEEP THROAT, mostly because of Boreman’s previous on-screen talents for performing felatio.  The rest, as they say, is history, and their small little porn film unintentionally becomes an overnight sensation. 

However, these aforementioned scenes all seem to frame Lovelace’s achieving of stardom with a relatively rosy and idealistic glow, but then the film doubles back and gives us the truly darker underbelly of what transpired.  We then witness not only the animalistic hostility of Traynor as he chronically abused his wife, but also how DEEP THROAT affected both Lovelace’s life, her relationship with her parents, her sense of self-worth, and the larger movie-going culture as a whole (her infamous performance in DEEP THROAT soon became a punch line on late night talk show circuits).  When both Traynor and Lovelace begin to realize that they will not be sharing in the huge financial success of DEEP THROAT, the already cruel husband turns to more vile methods to financially get what he wants out of his wife. 

LOVELACE was directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and, as stated, the pair lovingly bathes the screen in the colorfully grim tones of the 70’s porn industry, an ethos that both easily ensnared Lovelace and then callously spit her out.  The performances by the cast are all resoundingly solid as well; Seyfried, a natural girl-next-door beauty, is well cast as Lovelace, evoking a young girl of limitless ambition who then has to relay an older woman utterly broken down by her husband, the industry, and life in general.  Sarsgaard can play predatory creeps with the best of them, and he seems to relish making Traynor a wholeheartedly loathsome creature.  Oddly enough, I found myself gravitating to the performances by Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick, who make the most of their limited screen time in their portrayal of Lovelace’s parents; they both despise her participation in the porn industry while still loving her all the same.  Patrick has a moment on the phone with his daughter where he reveals that he has seen DEEP THROAT that’s as heartbreaking as any scene I’ve seen. 

Yet, for as intrinsically well acted and good looking as LOVELACE is, the film nonetheless feels a bit rushed (it tries to cram in far too much history in it’s grossly limiting 90-plus minutes) and other times just feels half-baked and undernourished from a narrative perspective.  There’s ample details regarding Lovelace’s life that seems to have been conveniently left out, like how her post-Traynor marriage with children – shown as rather content and stress-free – was, by her own admission, nothing actually of the sort.  Then there are some of the more nagging conundrums about Lovelace’s post-porn/anti-porn advocacy, like the fact that she posed as her Lovelace persona in the magazine 'The Leg Show' in 1994, which somewhat contradicts her firm stance against women being sexually exploited.  LOVELACE presents its title character in perhaps too many broad strokes for its own good at times, and without much in the way of digging deeper into the peculiar incongruities of her life.