The main reason my wife and I
added Lovelace to the queue was because of Peter Sarsgaard. The main reason my
wife did not watch this movie, and I believe never will, is because of
everything else about this movie. Not that she’s missing much other than a bad
movie that drops the ball big time.
I know very little of Lovelace (the
woman who starred in the most popular adult film (porn) ever) except that she
was in the most popular adult film (porn) ever. Can’t say I was really all that
interested in her story either until I saw the documentary Inside Deep Throat,
which is no longer streaming, but I when it was I watched it and it was very
interesting. Now, it’s been awhile since I saw that documentary, but I remember
it talking about Lovelace’s claims of abuse and being forced into doing the
movie, and how later in life she spoke up about how she was against pornography
and the treatment of women, or something like that. Either way, the idea of the
first real porn super star changing everything about her life and speaking out
against it all, and presenting another side to the things she’d been through
that most took for granted that she was okay with – that is a movie I would
watch, and I’m still waiting to watch it because Lovelace is not that movie,
not matter how hard it tries.
I think the script is just so feeble a
base for everything important in this movie that even the fine actors,
Sarsgaard, and Amanda Seyfried (who I think can be a really good actress), are
unable to feel comfortable enough to really perform. The whole thing felt like
a bad, more tame version of Star 80 (minus the murder but with just a touch of
Eric Roberts). The way the story is presented, showing a large chunk of
Lovelace’s life, and then going back and showing parts of it all again, but
this time you see that she wasn’t really into everything that you just saw not
40 minutes ago, and where the movie stumbles is that it’s not believable. I’m
not saying it didn’t happen that way. I wasn’t there. Maybe she was forced into
the drugs and the sex, and maybe her biography that she wrote describing her
side of things is way better at presenting her side of the story than this
movie, but I’m going off of this movie. This movie shows you things but it just
doesn’t make them believable.
At one point, during a party, in the
room next door you can hear all this yelling and grunting and
slamming against the wall, and the people of the party get a kick out of
hearing Lovelace having such wild and crazy sex after having just filmed the
porn. Then, later we see the scene again, and no surprise, she’s actually being
beat to shit by her husband, but according to the movie no one ever notices
that she’s been beaten. Again, I must stress that: “according to the movie”.
There are times when Lovelace runs to her mother for help, and she’s been
abused but her mother tells her that no matter what you promised to stick by
your husband so you have to. It was pretty sad and frustrating, but why is only
her mom aware – the one person who won’t do shit? Why not go to her dad? He’s
kind of a quite and worthless man compared to his domineering wife, but still!
I’m just saying that the movie did not
show the story well enough, the whole movie feels rushed, rushed the
whole way to the end when there’s really nothing that happens.
So I ended up liking the movie. I
know, I know, what the hell, right? Well, without getting too much into my way
of rating (my wife has given up trying to understand why I rate movies the way
I do), the supporting actors in this movie are great.
Lovelace’s parents were amazing. I did
not recognize her mom at all, and I don’t think it was because of the make-up
or anything, I give it to her acting, I thought it was great, and her dad, who
did nothing more than just sit and watch TV, almost brought a tear to my eye
when he finally talks to his daughter and mentions that he saw her movie.
Seyfried’s reaction and his talking about seeing the movie was heartbreaking. His
voice, full of confusion and disappointment, and her inability to really defend
herself seemed real, and made me think about the parents of those who do porn.
I can see both sides, I mean, your kid is old enough to do whatever they damn
well please, they wanna do porn you can’t do shit to stop them, so do you get
upset, embarrassed, disappointed? Or do you support them, either openly, or
silently – meaning, secretly hope they’ll come to their senses while still
keeping them close? I have two little kids, a boy and a girl, and I can’t
imagine them doing anything that would drive me away from them entirely, but at
the same time I can imagine them growing up and doing something that challenges
me and my love for them.
They’re human, and the possibilities are there.
Either way, as a father, I could see and feel the
possible pain that Lovelace’s father was going through, and for me they both
got that scene perfectly. If only the whole movie carried such impact.
I would suggest people see this movie for that scene, as
well as another one. The second scene is
when Lovelace is trying to get away from her abusive husband, she gets out of
the car and runs down the street with him chasing her, and he catches her just
as the cops show up. The cops see that it’s that girl from that porn, and their
tone says that she’s probably the trouble here and not her husband, and the
look on Lovelace’s face is the look of someone in a horror or sci-fi movie
where even those paid to protect don’t care about her.
The movie may not show the life of Lovelace
all that well, but it does at times capture what I could believe to be the
feelings of what was going on for her, and those moments when the acting was
good and the writing was strong worked well enough to make me like the movie. I
wanted to really like it, I wanted it to be interesting and cover the sort of
things the documentary did, but had I not seen the documentary first, had I not
known about the history of Lovelace and the story of the movie itself, I
probably would have found this movie much more interesting.
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