Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
MPAA Rating: R
Film Pulse Score: 4.5/10
The story of Linda Lovelace, the actress who became a celebrity after starring in the pornographic film Deep Throat, was one wrought with pain, abuse, triumph, and ultimately tragedy. Unfortunately, the film Lovelace was wrought with mediocre storytelling, an incoherent structure, and a stilted narrative that hardly felt complete.
The film begins with a scene featuring a broken down looking Lovelace, played by Amanda Seyfried, in the bathtub, smoking a cigarette, with an interview playing in the form of a voiceover. Then we jump back several years to see a 21 year old Lovelace, who is still living at home with her folks played by Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick. From here she meets her future husband and general sleazebag Chuck Traynor, played by Peter Sarsgaard.
This is where the structural problems of the film begin to arise. Although this is nothing more than a cliffnotes version of her life, the directors deemed it necessary to jump around in time, moving forward six years at a time, then jumping back to reveal the abuse that was happening during what we’ve seen previously. This choice was probably the worst aspect of the film, as it felt unnecessary and wholly unnatural.
The random cuts to Lovelace being interviewed by a reporter, played by Chloe Sevigny, felt even more unnecessary, as it wasn’t used as a through line but more of a distraction to the generic by the numbers biopic formula of the rest of the film. It almost seems as if there was meant to be more done with this stuff, however it was removed due to time constraints.
The strongest areas of the film came from the performances of the cast despite some questionable casting choices, such as James Franco playing Hugh Hefner in all but two minutes of screen time, and Adam Brody as Lovelace’s co-star on Deep Throat.
Amanda Seyfried pulls off what is certainly to be her most challenging role, and successfully conveys the pain and ultimate transformation of the character. Although the script is lacking and there is quite a bit of heavy-handed melodrama, Seyfried brings this naivety to the character that instantly makes us gravitate towards her and feel that much more appalled when bad things happen.
Peter Sarsgaard was also brilliant, and between this and his performance on The Killing, he deserves any accolades he may receive during awards season. He was so despicable and awful, and he dominated every scene he was in.
Other than these standout performances, nearly everything else in the film was mediocre at best. Clocking in at a brief 92 minutes, Lovelace frantically breezed through certain events, while lingering entirely too long on others. The midway flashback and reveal is border-line offensive and the film as a whole feels like an incomplete product. To learn the full story of Linda Lovelace, it’s best to simply read her autobiography or even watch the documentary Inside Deep Throat, skip this.
