Dir. Mary Harron, US, 2005, 91 mins
Cast: Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor, Jared Harris
Review by Carol Allen
The Bettie Page of the title was a naïve innocent from a conservative religious family in Tennessee, who became a pin up girl sensation in the sleazy 1950s New York world of girlie magazines, where her legendary provocative poses featuring bondage, nudity and other exotica made her the target of a Senate investigation into pornography. Co-writer/director Mary Harron uses her story as a means of exploring the sexual and pop cultural attitudes of the period. As she did in American Psycho, Harron employs an elegant visual language to further her story telling and evoke the period. It is largely filmed in stylish black-and-white, similar to Goodnight and Good Luck, interspersed with fifties style colour sequences - holiday home movies, living magazine covers and old style technicolour scenes. The opening sets the mood and the period beautifully – sensual jazz sound track and seedy looking men in raincoats in bookstores asking for the "special stuff", which is under the counter, from where we move into the Senate investigation room, where Senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn) is conducting his investigation and incidentally apologising to any smokers present for the discomfort inflicted on them by the non-smoking rule - oh my! - while the conservatively dressed Bettie sits outside, waiting to be called, all setting up the context for the subsequent telling of her rise from church-going and abused country girl to notoriety.
At the centre of it is a delightful performance from Gretchen Mol as Bettie. She is very pretty with a glorious smile, vulnerable and naïve but with a lovely sense of mischief, enjoyment of her particular God-given gift, and an enchanting lack of inhibition. Despite her innocence, she comes over not as a victim but as a woman who owns and enjoys her life and her body. Pushing her along the road to infamy are brother and sister photographer team Irving and Paula Klaw (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor), persuading her that this servicing of their customers' needs is all just innocent fun, and sleazy British photographer and illustrator John Willie (a rakish performance from Jared Harris). It’s all so charming that it isn’t until her boyfriend points out the dark implications of those bondage pics that you really get the darker sexual implications of some of those poses. The Senate sub committee have sounded like such pompous prats up to then that in the light of today's attitudes we have gone along with the "just a bit of fun" line.
In 1957 after the committee had made her in some ways the equivalent in American sexual history of what Christine Keeler was later to become to Britain's, (though without the political sex scandal aspect), Bettie Page left New York and disappeared into obscurity. In Mary Harron's refreshingly original and intelligent movie, her youthful self lives again.
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