The Sorrowful Side Effects of "Deep Throat"

in 4th Odessa International Film Festival

by Dejan Petrovic

From July 12 to 20, the fourth edition of this constantly growing festival was held in the beautiful Ukrainian sea city of Odessa. In the diverse and carefully curated program, spectators had the opportunity to watch both homegrown and international films. In the Gala Premieres section was a very attractive film by two American directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace. Both filmmakers grew up with an awareness of the legendary porn queen Linda Lovelace. Several decades after the peak of her fame and more than a decade after her death, they decided to create a controversial yet sensitive story about Lovelace for the big screen.

A humble everyday “girl next door” from a traditional and religious background becomes synonymous with oral sex for millions of men around the world, after appearing in Deep Throat. The film will become the most popular porno ever made, earning over 600 million dollars! However, it turns out that Linda Boreman (Lovelace’s real name) receives little over a thousand dollars from her appearance in the film.

Lovelace is set at the beginning of a new decade — after the disillusionment and wildness of the 1960s — and its spirit and style reflects this period. Linda’s fatal mistake is her encounter with future husband and pimp Chuck Traynor, for which she will pay a high price. Rather than a self-confident nymphomaniac, Linda was a rather naïve provincial who was not able to deal with her newfound circumstances. Within a short time, she was being photographed for the covers of prestigious men’s magazines such as Playboy and having a good time with Hugh Hefner. Although Linda’s involvement with porn only lasted a couple of weeks, her influence on the industry was tremendous, despite the fact that she spent her last years fighting against the abuse of young girls in pornography.

The film gives us predictable linear storytelling and basic factual data, while overstressing the issue of exploitation. Therefore the potentially fascinating themes of the story are lost. In the lead roles, Amanda Seyfried and Peter Sarsgaard are pretty convincing as a naïve, curious teenager and a violent man without scruples. Nevertheless, Linda’s story might have been better told as a documentary, rather than this moralistic saga about the meteoric rise and downfall of a porn queen. But finally, the film does succeed in introducing a wider, younger audience to the sad fate of one of the pioneers of pornography: a marginal, controversial and “filthy” film genre which is currently experiencing a revival on the internet.

Edited by Lesley Chow
© FIPRESCI 2013