The Notorious Bettie Page

Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) goes from small town girl to nation-wide sex symbol.

Biopics are a tricky proposition. The good ones put you right inside the skin of their subjects. The Notorious Bettie Page, unfortunately, isn’t one of these.

This isn’t a movie about Bettie Page as she was then, this is a movie about how Bettie Page thinks she was then. The movie paints her as an almost unbelievably naïve woman who lacks any real flaws.

Instead of exploring the inevitable scars that had to occur given her life experiences, the movie focuses on the repressed sexual attitudes of 1950’s America and how Bettie became a victim of her own success.

Before watching this film I knew next to nothing about Bettie Page. Now that I’ve seen it, I still feel the same way.