Filmography
Sep. 16th, 2009 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThe Notorious Bettie Page
This is a biopic style about the well-known pin-up model/bondage queen Bettie Page, whose heyday was in the 1950s; her career got a bit railroaded by Congressional hearings into pornography of lewd BDSM-style photography and films, and she eventually returned to the Christian faith in Florida.
That isn't quite as hokey as it sounds. The film makes a very good job of tracing Bettie's relationship with religion, and the way that she doesn't necessarily see her day job as conflicting with her religious beliefs - and, when she does, her struggles with that. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and the film really builds a continual arc between her early religious experiences there and her later return to what one might call more conventional religious practice. But there is no moral condemnation of Page herself - it's always quite clear that she is thinking on a moral level, and is genuinely considering the ethics of what she's doing, but hasn't come down on the same side as other people have.
This fits in rather nicely with a thread of naivety in Bettie's character that is ruthlessly exploited; there's a sense of trust in the goodness of human nature that at the beginning of the film is painfully abused by humanity in general. That trusting streak continues through the film, and Gretchen Mol does a brilliant job of projecting that innocence convincingly. That said - this is a very silly film, and isn't particularly interested in character development. The cinematography is good, and the shots are nicely composed (as you would hope in a film so dedicated to a photographic model). But there's something ultimately rather shallow about the whole thing, which is a shame. Three and a half stars.
This is a biopic style about the well-known pin-up model/bondage queen Bettie Page, whose heyday was in the 1950s; her career got a bit railroaded by Congressional hearings into pornography of lewd BDSM-style photography and films, and she eventually returned to the Christian faith in Florida.
That isn't quite as hokey as it sounds. The film makes a very good job of tracing Bettie's relationship with religion, and the way that she doesn't necessarily see her day job as conflicting with her religious beliefs - and, when she does, her struggles with that. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and the film really builds a continual arc between her early religious experiences there and her later return to what one might call more conventional religious practice. But there is no moral condemnation of Page herself - it's always quite clear that she is thinking on a moral level, and is genuinely considering the ethics of what she's doing, but hasn't come down on the same side as other people have.
This fits in rather nicely with a thread of naivety in Bettie's character that is ruthlessly exploited; there's a sense of trust in the goodness of human nature that at the beginning of the film is painfully abused by humanity in general. That trusting streak continues through the film, and Gretchen Mol does a brilliant job of projecting that innocence convincingly. That said - this is a very silly film, and isn't particularly interested in character development. The cinematography is good, and the shots are nicely composed (as you would hope in a film so dedicated to a photographic model). But there's something ultimately rather shallow about the whole thing, which is a shame. Three and a half stars.
