Film Reviews

The Notorious Bettie Page

• Rating:
• Director: Mary Harron
• Starring: Chris Bauer
• Details: US, 100mins, 15A.

"Betty, doctors write books about this sort of thing. It's abnormal" After being mistreated by her father and then her husband, God-fearing Bettie Page (Mol) leaves Tennessee for New York with dreams of becoming a movie star. Landing a job posing for a swimsuit magazine, Bettie soon poses for lingerie magazines and then makes the jump to full frontal nude pictures - pictures that you just don't see in 50s America. Although shy, Bettie becomes one of the first women to be photographed in bondage - something that the higher echelons of New York politico don't take too kindly.
Light-hearted titillation is the order of the day as Mary Harron teams up with writer Guinevere Turner after their collaboration on American Psycho. However, they lose any momentum they had with this dull, unimpressive story based on the real life 'Pin-Up Queen Of The Universe' Bettie Page. The film looks beautiful, as you would expect from Harron and there are some jokes littered here and there as the director sends up 50s porn just like P.T Anderson did with his Brock Landers inserts in Boogie Nights. Harron keeps the audience at an emotional distance like a voyeur in a seedy porn shop and while that might have been a clever idea, it doesn't make for engaging cinema. It is this emotional distance that kills the film as we never really get to know the real Bettie nor are we allowed to. Mol, a dead ringer for Page, can't be faulted as her performance is pitch-perfect, and how she made Bettie coy and innocent while whipping a woman in a garter belt is anyone's guess.

Review by Gavin Burke