The Notorious Bettie Page

Mary Heron's third feature film, The Notorious Betty Page, reunites here with cast members past, but doesn't seem to have the same luster her previous films held. While this film is not without it's attractive flourishes, it does, however, lack the style, ambiance and aggressively satirical and playful attentiveness to societal hypocrisies that her previous two films did; namely "American Psycho."
Rapidly cruising through the first half of Page's life, Heron and crew perhaps missed some of the significant, life-altering experiences, which, unbeknownst at the time, created, in the mind of a young impressionable Page, the desire and willingness to allow the objectification of her body. The hinting that is included, is subtle and not oppressive; a touch too few filmmakers are willing to display in order to deliver their message to audience members. Heron, alternately, produces a more streamlined film, one that foregoes conventional tellings of abuse and rather, infers their existence, a move that allows her to make progressional changes more rapidly, which is usually a breath of fresh air, but here seems to create a slap-dash feeling within the film.

Gretchen Mol perfectly transcends her own screen image and becomes completely lost within the character she creates around the persona the real Bettie Page created for herself. Mol infuses her own ravishing good looks with the practically patented hairstyle and sweetly menacing facial expressions Paige was so well known for. Mol, to her credit, perfectly captures Page's innate naivete and effervescent willingness to perform anything asked of her, which not only alludes to the deep psychological scars left by the before mentioned abuse, but suggests that it was simply a projection of her personality.

Other roles in the film are of great credit to those performing them as well. Lilly Taylor and Jared Harris (both used by Heron previously) help create that surrogate family, making Page safe a secure in doing what she did so successfully. Notably, David Strathairn utilizes what little screen time he actually has in such a way that his part - arguably the concept of American sexuality, morality and feminine roles during the 1950's - becomes not only a subplot of the film, but the core message.

Heron utilizes black and white photography for the majority of the film, which assists the viewer in better placing the time period. This is a remedial ploy, but one that works in everyone's favor. Heron's meticulous touch and decision-making abilities allow her to seamlessly switch the film to color and back again almost without the viewer noticing. Bringing the film to color to depict the myriad of magazine covers Page appeared on and to transition the locale from New York to Florida, strangely, is a nice touch. While the film seems rushed, which can be forgiven in the beginning, the end, however, suffers from too little dramatization of Page's ultimate shift into Christianity and seems to glaze over the issue as if it were of no consequence.

HBO Films did a fairly decent job producing the DVD release. With a feature length commentary featuring Heron and Mol and two well-produced featurettes, it utilizes the bare minimum of what people expect from a DVD nowadays, but does not fall short.