Lovelace

Amanda Seyfried does a decent job playing Linda Lovelace, infamous star of Deep Throat who, as it turns out, had one truly lousy husband in Chuck Traynor (a creepy Peter Sarsgaard). Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have made a film that feels surprisingly short, especially since part of their technique is to show the story from two different angles. The movie builds up to Lovelace's big porn moment, and then reverses and retells some of her ascension again, this time showing Traynor's brutality. Being that the film is just over 90 minutes, it winds up not covering much ground. Still, Epstein and Friedman pull good performances out of Seyfried and Sarsgaard, with Sharon Stone doing decent work as Lovelace's angry mother. In fact, this is one of Stone's best performances, and she is nearly unrecognizable. The film features an interesting supporting cast, including James Franco in a cameo as Hugh Hefner, and small parts for Bobby Cannavale, Robert Patrick, Chris Noth and Wes Bentley. One of the fascinating things about Lovelace (real name Linda Boreman) is that she turned against pornography and fought the medium shortly after becoming the world's first true porn star. The film touches upon this fact very briefly, but then ends abruptly. Boreman died in 2002. As it stands, all things considered, the film is just OK … and perhaps a little shallow. The directors manage a respectable recreation of the early ‘70s in what ultimately feels like about 75 percent of a good movie. (Available for rent on iTunes while playing in select theaters.)