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The Notorious Bettie Page

Banal bio-pic focuses on the facts

By PETER KEOUGH | April 19, 2006

2.5 Stars

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE: Gretchen Mol doesn't dent the surface.

Beauty is only skin deep, and for that matter, so is sex. Maybe that’s all Mary Harron is trying to get across in her banal bio-pic of the cult-favorite ’50s pin-up girl. Casting Gretchen Mol in the title role guarantees that the film won’t dent the surface of this tawdry icon with her beaming girl-next-door grin, sultry body, and girlish whip. Shooting in nondescript black-and-white (with Tashlinesque color for when Bettie bares all), Harron relates the facts: raised in a fundamentalist, perhaps abusive, household down South; married young to a sexist lout; had acting aspirations that took her to New York and eventually a surrogate family with a ma-and-pa (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor) softcore porn studio. Not even a gang rape dims her smile. So how did she end up a Bible-thumping curmudgeon? The real Bettie Page shows up in a concluding clip, enigmatic, or empty, to the end.

Topics: Reviews , Lili Taylor, Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol, More

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