Gretchen Mol gives an incandescent performance in Mary Harron's The Notorious Bettie Page. If you could give an Oscar for radiating joy while dressed in knee-high spiky leather boots and a corset, Mol deserves it. The surprise casting move pf the blond actress works; primarily known for supporting roles, Mol has an uncanny likeness to the dark-haired 1950s pin-up goddess. Sexy and wholesome, she couldn't be any better.
The Notorious Bettie Page is filmed mostly in black and white, a decision that enhances the visual splendor of the experience. Harron intersperses real footage of an almost forgotten 1950s New York to marvelous effect. In a fast-paced montage of giddy glee, Harron also recreates actual magazine covers of the infamous Bettie Page; these, however, along with some scenes in Flordia, are brought to the screen in glorious technicolor.
Forget the seedy world of pornography: this film is fun. Page has her pictures taken by supportive, kindly women. Miami photographer Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson) snaps the nude shots that land Bettie Page in Playboy, and Lili Taylor plays Paula Klaw, a no-nonsense business woman who specializes in bondage. These scandalous images, which senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn, in a 180 degree turn from his role in Good Night and Good Luck) takes to Congress seem endearingly tame compared to the porn available today.
The surface pleasures of watching Mol--and the delight she takes in posing nude--makes the story whiz by. Without relying on biopic cliches, Harron and Guinevere Turner's screenplay suggests how a good Christian girl from Tennessee can become a generation's most imfamous sex siren. Early scenes point to sexual abuse as a way to understand Page's naive success in the adult entertainment industry. On the other hand, the film refuses to give simple answers. Who was Bettie Page? The pin-up girl will gladly strip off her clothes; her bared skin, however, is all we get to contemplate. The woman, so often inscrutably happy and aglow, remains a mystery.
