Review of The Notorious Bettie Page (2006) by Abi S — 13 Aug 2007

This movie could have been soooo great, except 1) it didn't quite know what it wanted to be-a biography? An indictment of censureship? An examination of the opening up of the adult entertainment industry? and 2) the depiction Bette as an overly naive country bumpkin, a sort of backwoods fauve, is as inaccurate as it it is pathatic-while it was her innocent enjoyment of the various poses and acts she assumed that was probably her most outstanding feature, Bettie was actually a very smart woman who had a hard early life and was not the perpetual victim as portrayed here.

The switching from seedy black-and-white to beautiful 50's technicolor as an overly obvious device to demonstrate how much she loved FLA is distracting and amaturish. Gretchen Mol is able to capture Bettie's look, but not her magic-Bettie deservees better.