Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

agostino-dallas I am a movie goer and I go a lot. I have seen many, many people embodying real people on the big screen but nothing like this. The Oscar is little compared to what she did. The movie is also sharply directed and you don't doubt for a second she is Bettie Page. I am a big fun of pin up girls. I can't help it. I see those 50's and 60's housewives and I am like a kid in a candy store. Bettie might have made some stuff who some people could have found inappropriate but it wasn't sure not pervert, not evil, but she was terribly criticized and probably felt so bad about herself. Men took advantage of her, for a change. Does it ring a bell? Gretchen you're great! So is Bettie.

lost-in-limbo Sex sells… but they weren't ready for the kinkiness. Director Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol) crafts out a respectably diverting, but moving bio-pic on legendary cult pin-up sensation Bettie Page. The narrative follows on through her southern childhood of a religious upbringing with a controlling mother to her quest of being an inspired actress (something and then it took off for her with the modelling jobs, especially her participation in outlawed bondage fetish photographs/and films that would cause a ruckus for their deviant nature and would become a target of a Senate investigation. She was a natural in what she did because she loved what she was doing, and became one of the world's first sex icons… and a timeless one too. What really makes this one work is the tremendously radiant and fetching Gretchen Mol who really does sincerely morph into Bettie Page's buxom shape and spirited persona. It's an admirably flawless and confident performance. Some of the forlorn encounters/or dilemmas facing her character could have tipped her over the edge or mentally damaged her, but she always seemed to find some sort strength to pull through it. The rest of the performances are truly fitting. Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor are outstanding as Irving and Paula Klaw who set-up and photographed Page's bondage pictures. An impulsive Jared Harris has fun with his part, and has some amusing scenes with Mol that really open up her character. Sarah Paulson, Cara Seymour and John Cullum are also good. Filmed mostly in black and white, Harron presents an ideal period flavour of the times (the 1950's --- sexual repression) and inserts some provocatively stylised filming techniques and a tuneful jazz score. Maybe not as outrageous as it could have been (well anyhow it would be tame by today's standards), but still its quite quirky and risqué in a tasteful sense with exposing flesh/nudity. Page rightly saw nothing wrong about what she did, just another expressive art form… but this did affect her ambitions of becoming a serious actress. The story does seem to loose its way in the last third, as it's dramatic structure becomes choppy and briskly concluded. It was an interesting look at the exploration of sexuality and the growing pop-culture that a society at the time couldn't understand or come to grips with.

Andres Salama An entertaining though somewhat conventional biopic of the famous bondage model from the fifties. Gretchen Mol acquits herself nicely in the title role – even though she looks to be quite a bit taller than Bettie was. As played in this movie, Page was a naive and devoutly Christian girl from Tennessee, who nevertheless, after moving to New York, became the main model of a genre that was considered extremely shocking, not to mention illegal, at the time (of course, by the standards of today's pornography, Bettie's photos look now almost innocent). Why she did so is never quite explained, unless you consider a flashback to a gang rape during her teenage years as a valid explanation. In a final analysis, you probably can't explain why a nice girl agree to model in what was then considered extremely shocking set pieces, except by falling into amateur psychology. Though the religion of her main photographers, Irving and Paula Claw is never mentioned explicitly, it is nevertheless quite obvious - therefore, the most provocative thing in this movie is not the nudity but the subtext of a small town southern Christian girl exploited by callous Jewish pornographers. In black and white with a few color scenes.

ShootingShark Bettie Page is a young woman from Tennessee who drifts to New York City in the forties and starts to make a name for herself as a glamour model. When she starts to pose for bondage fetish pictures, it causes ructions in her relationships and she starts to question the value of her vocation in the eyes of her Christian faith.A lot of biopics tend to be about pompous figures from world history, but here's one about someone who was genuinely interesting and lovable. What's most intriguing about Page is that somehow she represents both the glamorous, sexy, fun-lovin' lure of America and the seedy, repressed, puritanical mentality that permeates its society. She's a Bad Girl who was in fact really a Good Girl, and her forthright take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards herself is refreshingly honest and commendable. Mol is fantastic in the lead; with her broad face and blonde curls she doesn't look anything like the real Page, but somehow when she gets the black fringe haircut and starts cheesecake posing for the guys in the house she suddenly blossoms into an amazing dead ringer for the real deal, carefully developing the character's aspirations and doubts. The support cast is good, with fine turns especially from Taylor and Paulson as snappers Paula Klaw and Bunnie Yeager. For whatever reason, Page is popular with women as well as men, and it's refreshing that this film was mostly made by women. Harron's direction is excellent, with nice pacing, mood, comic touches (the recreations of Page's stag loops are wonderful) and terrific juxtaposition of black-and-white New York with colourful Florida. Guinivere Turner's contribution as writer and co-producer is also tremendous. I've always been a huge fan of Page, purely because she was such a striking-looking woman - nobody looked like her or smiled like her. The movie charts her life mostly through her fifties heyday; she had some hard times after that, but her work had a renaissance in the eighties (notably through the character Betty in Dave Stevens' comic The Rocketeer and a fanzine by Greg Theakston) and this movie is a great celebration of her life. She died in 2008. Funded by HBO as a made-for-cable project, but also given a limited theatrical release.