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Review:
 Bettie
Page was the first of her kind. Before here, there were no porn
stars. Oh, there was porn all right, but no model actually became
really famous posing for it until Bettie came along.
The problem is that while Bettie was very kinky when she was
working, she led a rather boring life in general. Unfortunately,
we have to see a great deal of that, or else it would be a porn
film. However, this is a TV movie getting a minor theatrical
release, and thus it's rather tame.
We begin with (Gretchen Mol) sitting outside a congressional
hearing room in Washington DC waiting to testify before Sen. Estes
Kefauver's(David Strathairn) hearings on the effects of
pornography. We then flashback to her childhood(where she is
played by Molly Moore), which is rather ordinary, then her brief
marriage before going to New York to be discovered, which she is,
sort of, by amateur photo club who's members sell to men's
magazines.
She winds up with a standard gig with the Claw siblings(Chris
Bauer and Lili Taylor), who sell photos of all kinds, but make a
good deal of their money from “S&M” and other kinds of porn. To
Bettie this is all good fun, and pervs like the notorious
cartoonist John Willie (Jared Harris) are treated like mild
eccentrics.
The problem here is that everybody else is a stick-figure. Bettie
seems nice enough, and we don't actually get any insight into
either her or her times, that is except that porn was far tamer
back then then it is now.
Wait until it arrives on cable, or if you've only got basic, don't
even bother.
Eric Lurio
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