Plot
The 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.
Release Year: 2013
Rating: 6.3/10 (992 voted)
Director:Rob Epstein
Storyline
The 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.
Filming Locations: Alex Theatre - 216 N. Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California, USA
Box Office Details
Budget: $10,000,000
(estimated)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Amanda Seyfried and Wes Bentley had previously worked together in the film, Gone. See more »
Goofs:
In a scene set in 1970, two characters discuss The French Connection. That film wasn't released until 1971. See more »
User Review
Author:
Rating: 2/10
First off, the real Linda Lovelace changed her story a bunch of times
throughout her life (including the FOUR autobiographies she wrote):
which one are we to believe? Porn star Linda? Born again Christian
Linda? Feminist Linda? Aging and short of cash Linda? The problem with
this movie is it treats even the most bizarre tales spun by Lovelace as
the God's own truth, even though everyone else involved in any of the
porn productions she was involved in refute just about all of it.
Secondly, Amanda Seyfried is way too pretty and childlike to play
Lovelace with any kind of credibility. The real Linda Lovelace always
bordered on the creepy, haggard and slightly cross-eyed, and it was
only her (then) highly unusual ability to 'deep throat' that she had
going for her - at least the film got that part right.
Her endless self-victimizing tales, such as her porn shoots being
filmed with a gun LITERALLY pressed to her head, and her becoming the
most famous porn star in the world only out of fear that her family
might be murdered(?), run contrary to the reports of almost everyone
else she worked with, who considered this woman - who'd previously had
sex with a dog (oh yes, THAT wasn't mentioned in the film, was it?)- to
be an inveterate liar and a 'sexual super-freak'. In her private life
too, every time any of her apparently happy marriages ended, she played
the victim all over again and alleged abuse from pretty much every man
she was ever involved with right up until the end of her life -
including Larry Marchiano, her 'happy ending' at the end of this film.
Lovelace was a very sad character wanting more than anything approval,
sympathy and attention and apparently just said whatever she thought a
'good girl' should say in whatever circles she moved. As her fellow
adult actress Gloria Leonard said, "This was a woman who never took
responsibility for her own choices made, but instead blamed everything
that happened to her in her life on porn." The story of her need to
present herself in such a way, why she did it and the fall-out such
behaviour caused to everyone else around her would have made a far
better film.
I liked the 70s period detail, and there are some funny lines from
Boardwalk Empire's Bobby Cannavale and Hank Azaria, but they're way out
of place in such an oppressive, lurid nightmare fantasy depicting all
the Boogie Nights-style shenanigans as simply abuse. By swallowing
every bizarre allegation from this one deeply unreliable source and
making her story exclusively one of victimhood we are infantilizing a
grown woman, treating her even after death as a sexless child who never
grew up and I found this deeply unpleasant to have to sit through.
Most of all I found it insulting to be presented with the self-pitying
excuses of a pathological liar depicted as objective reality. There was
absolutely no point to this movie being made, it says nothing of any
value and doesn't even entertain. It was a waste of everyone's time and
money, including mine.
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