Mary Harron’s fascinating directorial career (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol) has, to date, hinged on unhinged individuals. But Bettie Page – a kinky pin-up from the Eisenhower era – was no Valerie Solanas. A woman with no compunction about modelling naked or in bondage until her early retirement into devout Christianity, Ms. Page was reclaimed as a post-feminist icon during the early ‘90s. The truth, however, as Ms. Harron’s relentlessly sweet film has it, is rather more complicated than a case of early female empowerment.
Adopting the same breezy and decidedly asexual approach as its heroine, The Notorious Bettie Page skips merrily along even during the early Nashville years when young Bettie is abused by her father and sexually assaulted by a gang of toughs. Her blissful naivety and natural born exhibitionism carry her through her career as a fetish goddess and early spank porn star.
Weren’t Adam and Eve naked in the garden, she asks those who would cluck disapprovingly. The films and photos, she reasons, are just a bit of fun.
Men may drool moronically. Or, in the case of investigating smut-hunter general Senator Estes Kefauver (Strathairn), they may scowl. Bettie invariably tosses back her iconic ‘do and gets back into leather for some capering with the girls.
The actual porn, of course, by the standards of today, is barely smutty enough to advertise ice cream, but Ms. Harron and her fabulous leading lady Gretchen Mol (who deserves an Oscar for her work here) astutely mimic Bettie’s attitude by celebrating her body. How can this be filth, they ask, if she’s so clean. How can this be exploitation, if she’s having such a darned good time.
Slyly subverting our convention notions about pornography, Bettie Page is both ingénue and prodigy, loving Jesus and cavorting with whips.
The director, meanwhile, has fashioned a gorgeous shoestring retro style to offset Bettie’s sensual adventures, lapsing into monochrome and lurid technicolour to convey New York and Florida during the ‘50s.
We can’t truly know if Bettie was a total naïf at the time or if her Filth For Jesus campaign was spectacular doublethink, but happily, the real Bettie Page, now 82, has no problems with the duality of Harron’s portrait. She isn’t, however, all that keen on the word ‘notorious’ appearing in the title. Good for her.