Ahh, 1950s kink.
Bettie Page was the queen of the bondage pin-ups, a girl with a special talent for whips and big boots and a thousand-watt smile. There's an innocence and joy to her photos -- something that's completely unexpected, and part of the reason I think she's been popular for more than 50 years.
The movie skims over Bettie's early life -- small town girl, troubled home, an early marriage that went bad. When she heads to New York to find work as an actress the movie starts to open up.
Bettie is shown as stumbling into pin-up almost by accident, and her complete lack of concern for clothes made her a star. There's nothing naked about Bettie when she's nude -- she's just not wearing any clothes. She makes it seem completely natural.
The secret world of 1950s fetish pics is shown as a clannish family, where no one takes advantage of a naive girl who drinks Shirley Temples and looks around wide-eyed all the time. It's a little too idealized, I would think, but maybe that's just because it wouldn't happen that way today.
Gretchen Mol has the smile and Bettie's bangs. The movie is mostly shot in 1950s-style black and white, complete with wipes and fades, but the Florida sequences are drenched with glorious Technicolor -- it's a moving postcard.
The problem with the movie, I think, is that it never dips below the surface. We get lots of scenes of Bettie posing, but the script skips across her story like a picture book, and we never learn what she's thinking or why things happen. The late conversion is treated like "one day Bettie went to church."
Pretty to look at, but ultimately unsatisfying.
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