"The Notorious Bettie Page"

The Notorious Bettie Page is a curious, mostly charming and entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying film about the ultimate pin-up icon of contemporary times.

Actress Gretchen Mol plays Bettie, capturing the playfulness and free-spiritedness that was such a large part of Bettie Page's appeal. Mol gamely and fetchingly shows us the Bettie who frolicked naked for 'nudist' photographers and who so memorably posed as both Dominatrix and submissive in fetish pictorials.

Gretchen Mol is undeniably endearing in the role, at times disappearing into the character so completely that one could forget that we're not actually watching the real Bettie Page. Unfortunately, Gretchen Mol is not known as a performer of great depth, and her Bettie seems to lack depth as well. Ironically, Mol is the actress who was unfortunately and short-sightedly dubbed the 'It' girl of the 90's in Vanity Fair, here playing an undisputed and genuine It Girl of the 50's. One is left wondering whether the dominant sense of sweet-natured naïveté and near vacuousness in Mol's portrayal is entirely intentional or a reflection of the actress' lack of focus.

Director Mary Harron makes creative use of black and white photography intermixed with 50's era color to present an authentic seeming environment for her story to unfold within. Often, the movie actually feels as if it was made in the 50's, not only for its visual style, but also for its rather stilted dialogue and its editing and directorial style which recalls Kennedy era television.

What will frustrate some audiences is the manner in which screenwriter Guinevere Turner tells (or fails to tell) Bettie's story. Turner's last screenplay was for the Uwe Boll vampire film BloodRayne, but her most successful script was co-written with Mary Harron for the film version of American Psycho. Ms Turner's scripts are filled with half-realized characters. In American Psycho, this failing passed unchallenged, because the murdering anti-hero is such a cipher, a shark of a human being. With Turner's story of Bettie Page, one hopes for revelations that are merely hinted at.

At the end of The Notorious Bettie Page, we're left with some measure of disappointment: disappointment at the shooting-star quality of her brief career, frozen in time by her retirement from it and disappointment that in the course of this film, we had a chance do more than just skim the moments of her life and touch the surface of her world. The events of her life are passed over all too quickly, like pages in a scrapbook turned too fast.