The Notorious Bettie Page

What exactly were the 2 feminists who made this hoping to achieve other than critiquing 1950's morality & avoiding the "male gaze"? Does that mean trying to insure that men don't feel titillated by any of the cheesecake/kink on screen? How ironic. We learn Page experienced horrible traumas & that she's religious but also juggles 2 boyfriends at once. Oh & poses for BDSM photos - which she's anachronistically fine with. Page never wallows & always moves on, so we're left w/ a conflict-free film.

Bettie Page, in February 2007 Playboy: "I thought [Gretchen Mol] was real pretty, with those big eyes. She was good-looking, but the way she would screw up her face and all, I never did that. I didn't think her figure was too good. She was too tall, but she had a pretty face. That movie is full of lies. (...) The basic story is true, but the details are a lot of baloney - or most of them are."

Gretchen is the perfect Bettie Page and the mostly black-and-white cinematography with just a few splashes of color work well to convey the oldies mood. Still, it just feels very superficial and you don't get to know much about Bettie as a person. She's just going along with everyone and there are no twists or turns to the story as it choogles on, the temperature always lukewarm despite the (then) controversial subject that the movie covers.

Mol puts in a good performance, but the film feels like a damp squib in most regards. It's just a by-the-numbers biopic, taking us point by point through the various important moments of Page's modelling career, but never offering anything particularly insightful into her personality. The brief moments of colour photography made me wish the whole thing was in colour rather than the drab B&W we get for most of the runtime.

Gretchen Mol is a beauty, but there's not a whole lot going for this movie story-wise. I expected more from director Mary Harron who made one of my faves from the early oughts, American Psycho.