Soggetto: Il film Lovelace si basa sul libro di Eric Danville The Complete Linda Lovelace.
PRELIMINARIA:
Linda Lovelace, pseudonimo di Linda Susan Boreman (New York, 10 gennaio 1949 – Denver, 22 aprile 2002), è stata un'attrice pornografica statunitense.
Divenne una delle più famose attrici nel cinema pornografico, recitando come protagonista nel primo film a luci rosse legale della storia, Gola Profonda. Al termine della sua carriera, però, si schierò pubblicamente a fianco delle femministe contro il mercato della pornografia.
Lovelace ricostruisce la vita della celebre star del porno Linda Lovelace attraverso tre interviste rilasciate in tre diversi momenti della sua vita: l'esordio da pornostar che trasformò la giovane Linda Boreman in una celebrità e il rifiuto del mondo del porno, dopo l'abbandono del marito, che portò la Lovelace ad assumere posizioni radicali femministe e a combattere l'industria hard col nome di Linda Marchiano.
SHORT SYNOPSIS:
Story of Linda Lovelace, who is used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her coercive husband, before taking control of her life.
LONG SYNOPSIS:
The year 1972 marked the crossover of the film Deep Throat into mainstream cinema where it was to have a decisive impact on the film industry – long before the internet and the pornographisation of society. Chic porn was born. Made in six days on a budget of 25,000 US dollars, Deep Throat grossed over six million dollars. The film turned its hitherto unknown leading lady, Linda Lovelace – who received just 1,250 dollars for her performance – into an instant star and she soon became the sexual revolution’s pin-up girl.
Linda grows up in a devoutly religious family. But once she meets charismatic Chuck Traynor she begins to live life in the fast lane. Traynor invents her ‘sensational talent for oral sex’ and becomes her husband, manager and pimp. The naïve Lovelace blithely takes on her new role – but soon discovers the darker sides of both her husband and the sex industry. As in Inside Deep Throat by Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (Panorama 2005) Oscar-winning duo Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s new work Lovelace once again explores the topics of the porn industry, drugs, exploitation, sex and betrayal; it also depicts the discovery, rise and fall of a porn star.
Commento critico (a cura di ROB NELSON, www.variety.com)
The late star of "Deep Throat," Linda Lovelace, titled her 1980 autobiography "Ordeal," but, for the most part, "Lovelace" goes down smooth. Reducing an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes, this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried while making '70s porn look scarcely more sleazy than a movie-of-the-week melodrama from the period. Co-directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman forsake the truth-telling spirit of their past work in documentary, relying on jumbled chronology and long ellipses to smooth over the Lovelace saga's many rough edges. Commercial rewards appear doubtful nonetheless for the Radius-TWC pickup.
Nowhere in the pic's whirlwind 93 minutes are the details of Lovelace's unhappy childhood in working-class Yonkers; her pair of serious car accidents, one of which required a blood transfusion that eventually led to her contraction of hepatitis; her pre-"Deep Throat" involvement in "Dogarama," a film featuring bestiality; her
mid-'70s addiction to pot and painkillers; her late-'70s gravitation to Christianity; or her years of work in anti-porn feminist activism -- unless one counts a patronizing title card at the end.
An honest account of Lovelace's infernal experience might well be unfilmable in the current climate. In any event, "Lovelace" does make room within the boundaries of R-rated entertainment for the porn star's infamous husband, Chuck Traynor, played by a muttonchops-sporting Peter Sarsgaard as a greedy, glowering, violently coercive man who cries on occasion.
Near the start of the film, Traynor spies a 21-year-old Lovelace shimmying onstage at a Florida roller rink and sets about seducing the naive young woman, bringing flowers to dinner with her clueless parents (Robert Patrick, and a nearly unrecognizable Sharon Stone) before literally pushing her to practice the finer points of fellatio. Skip to six months later, as the new Mrs. Traynor bails her husband
out of jail and is convinced to audition for Gerry Damiano (Hank Azaria), a porn auteur who's proud to be lensing his next pic, "Deep Throat," in 35mm.
For reasons best known to themselves, Epstein and Friedman depict the production of "Deep Throat" twice in succession -- first with a wide-eyed and blushing Lovelace acting more or less independently, and again in a version that, acknowledging the real woman's "Ordeal," includes images of a pistol-packing Traynor delivering abusive direction behind the scenes. One can only surmise that the first version is there to appease those who continue to dispute the Lovelace account (this despite the fact that, as the film itself portrays, she passed a polygraph test administered by her publishers).
Whatever the case, "Lovelace" lacks the nerve to adhere to the standard practice of biography, resulting in a film that purports to respect its subject without fully taking her
side. To its credit, the movie includes one extremely unpleasant scene of Lovelace being raped by Traynor (who in real life argued that the pair's rough sex was consensual), but it concludes on a note that could easily be read as upbeat.
Certainly the film bears evidence of some last-minute shifts of political perspective: Sarah Jessica Parker was widely reported to have played Gloria Steinem in the movie, but she's missing from the final cut, while Chloe Sevigny's role as a feminist reporter amounts to a single shot.
William Arnold's impeccable production design, captured in all its garish color by Eric Edwards' cinematography, is never less than fully of the period. Other tech credits are vivid, but sometimes to a fault, as re-creations of "Deep Throat" shots suggest a vastly more accomplished production than the amateurish one that miraculously grossed an estimated $600 million -- with $1,250 reportedly going to