Linda Lovelace was the stage name of a woman who said she wouldn’t let her seventeen days in the pornography business define her life. So naturally, the film Lovelace is all about those seventeen days and how they defined her life.
Deep Throat was a porn movie made back in the good old days when you could see X rated films in local theaters and the people who made them liked to pretend they were real movies. Deep Throat is one of the first porn films to have a plot, such as it is. According to Lovelace, Deep Throat made $600 million dollars and Linda got paid $1250.
Our hero Linda has a hard life. She had an unplanned pregnancy when she was 18 which ended in her mother putting the child up for adoption. But this is just a bit of backstory, the bulk of the tale is about Linda’s marriage to a lowlife who sells her for sex at every opportunity and arranges for her to star in Deep Throat. He also beats her and generally makes her life a living hell.
Being a fan of Dexter and Breaking Bad my first thought was that Linda should kill the bastard in his sleep-but that kind of thing doesn’t seem to happen very often in real life. Instead, Linda puts up with her lowlife husband until she finally gets some help in leaving him. Then we flash forward six years to Linda writing her memoirs and protesting adult films.
The cast is good, filled with a lot of familiar faces who do a good job with what they have to work with. Linda Lovelace’s story isn’t exactly Gone With The Wind. Everyone is unhappy and moody and the only time Linda seems to smile is when she is making Deep Throat and joking around after filming.
Lovelace is a tamer, duller Boogie Nights. It had a few good moments, but for the most part this love letter to Linda Lovelace didn’t do much for me.
