Covering
Page’s rise and subsequent career as the nation’s premier pin-up queen, this
alluring biopic is easy to watch, thanks in part to Gretchen Mol’s lively
performance, but left me wanting a bit more.
Nashville-reared Bettie Page
was a 1950s pin-up queen. If she was not the first, she was probably the first
whose fame came solely as a result of the thousands of racy pictures she posed
for. As Page, Gretchen Mol is, in both senses, a knockout. In the many modeling
scenes, she retains an air of innocence even as she indulges in mock bondage
scenarios and the occasional nude shot. (Given the legal restrictions, the
nudes were almost all for private collectors who paid to take photographs.) Mol
as Page oozes allure, but not an overt sexuality. She seems intelligent, and
poised, but callow. Asked how she reconciles her work with her abiding faith,
she admits some uncertainty but simply explains that it seems to make people
happy. If her interior life went much beyond that (and Richard Foster’s
biography suggests that it did), it’s not frequently apparent here. There’s an
early sequence in which Page’s naiveté gets her in trouble. Maybe director Mary
Harron simply figured it was too important to exclude, but if anything the
movie suggests that it didn’t really affect her friendly, trusting nature.
Along with movies such as Kinsey, Harron’s film provides an useful
glimpse into a relatively repressed, mysterious era of American sexuality.
(Harron and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, previously collaborated on the
film version of American Psycho.) It’s largely in black and white, with
much of the look and feel of an older movie. When the color scenes begin, they
are deliberately blurred to look like an old post card. This movie is a bit
like a picture post card. It’s lovely to look at, but provides only a glimpse
of what it represents.
posted 8/23/13
No comments:
Post a Comment