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Film review

'Notorious' but not noteworthy

In its undeviating focus on the physical, The Notorious Bettie Page is silent on why a simple young woman became a '50s sex symbol.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published May 11, 2006

The Notorious Bettie Page is merely a feature-length montage, showing key moments in the 1950s kinky pinup queen's life but never delving too deeply into why they're important to Page or pop culture. It's dreadfully incomplete; The final version shown at the Sarasota Film Festival in April didn't even include an end note that Page is still living.

Director Mary Harron dropped that tidbit in an after-show Q&A session, adding that Page recently saw the movie at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion. That's a far cry from the Bible-thumping, born-again Page shown at her film's conclusion. The Notorious Bettie Page feels like the first part of a trilogy that won't be completed because the first episode is so disappointing.

What the movie has going for it is wonderful period design and Gretchen Mol's fetching presence as Page, a charismatic turn whether she's wearing clothes or not. This can't be considered a true performance because the screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner doesn't include much of a personality arc or dramatic journey. Mol carries the movie the way Page transcended the pages of pulpy underground magazines, with a sunny sexuality contradicting the sordid nature of the photographs. Page made dirty sex look fun, even harmless, and Mol has that kind of naughty appeal.

The film starts skimming from the beginning, showing Page as a churchgoing girl in Nashville, enduring a bad marriage. There's a scant suggestion that she was sexually abused by her father, and a clearer proposition that she was gang-raped after moving out on her own.

Then there's a leap to her being noticed by photographers, who first propose shooting her in bathing suits. How she goes from sexual victim to exhibitionist is never defined.

Harron expects us to fill in that gap and others. She wants us to play armchair psychologist: "Oh, Bettie must be doing those bondage and discipline photos to get back at the men who used her." That's a lot to ask of an audience distracted by re-creations of Page's poses in leather and less, often surrounded by panting photo club members paying to be that close to a sexpot. Harron gets the exploitation angle right, while meatier drama is overlooked.

A few glimpses of U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver David Straithairn chairing a committee on pornography allows Harron to identify the nation's uptight mood, but never to the degree that Kinsey does. No element of danger in Page's profession is noted, and the sleazy entrepreneurs (Jared Harris, Lili Taylor, Chris Bauer) cashing in on Page's allure are merely a jolly crew with potty mouths. No conflict ever erupts.

When Harron notices she's being repetitive, she pushes Bettie into her religious conversion and ends the film. More questions are raised throughout than are answered.

Harron also makes a questionable decision to switch from Mott Hupfel's evocative black-and-white cinematography to cotton candy color for scenes in Miami. Does this indicate a place where Bettie was happier? Who knows? The Notorious Bettie Page always looks good, especially Mol, and raises expectations that something special is going to happen. It doesn't. Like Bettie herself, the movie is simply a big tease.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.

The Notorious Bettie Page

Grade: C+

Director: Mary Harron

Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, Jared Harris, Chris Bauer, Sarah Paulson, David Strathairn, Cara Seymour, John Cullum

Screenplay: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner

Rating:R; frontal nudity, sexual situations, strong profanity, brief violence

Running time: 91 min.

[Last modified May 10, 2006, 11:50:11]