recommended

This is the scene at the start of The Notorious Bettie Page, Mary Harron's smart new movie that is not, despite its title, quite about Bettie Page. Though Bettie (Gretchen Mol) appears in nearly every scene, the movie is more about the many forces that made her "notorious," the moral hypocrisies and sexual repressions that shaped the '50s and persist today.

WHIPPED: Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol) takes aim.

That's not to say the film doesn't walk through some classic biopic steps: Bettie grew up in Tennessee, married a serviceman, moved to NYC where she met photographer Irving Klaw (Chris Bauer) and his sister Paula (Lili Taylor), and so on. But these particulars don't show cause-and-effect as much as they set a framework for Bettie's popularity, scandal and eventual turn to Jesus.

One aspect of this framework is the Senate committee hearings on what chairman Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn) calls "the effect of pornographic material on adolescents and juveniles." Waiting to testify, Bettie wears white gloves and a pert collar, Exhibit A in the government's case against the scourge of porn. She recalls (and the movie flashes back to) her childhood: She and her friends pose for a camera wielded by a boy their age, hiking up their skirts and laughing under the caption, "Nashville 1936." Her father calls her inside to do "chores," namely to "come on up" the ominous stairway to his bedroom.

But before you start thinking her later life results from her abuse, the film makes a more complicated case. Bettie is not just a victim of an exploitative culture; she's a product of conflicting expectations and ideals. On one hand, she's the perfect pinup, glancing back over her shoulder with a big smile. On another, she's a sex model, spike-heeled and corseted, bound and gagged, exposing herself and posing oh-so-outrageously with fellow model Maxie (an excellent Cara Seymour). Bettie embodies both, having "fun" and claiming innocence concerning any uses consumers might have for her image.

Of course, not all her experiences are copacetic: Trusting a boy she meets on the sidewalk, she ends up gang-raped, forced to give a group of boys in a car "some kinda satisfaction" even after she protests that it's "that time of the month." Following the offscreen attack, Bettie appears in classic '50s-movie framing, running up from the woods into the camera, tearful and afraid. She pauses, buttons her sweater and heads back to the city: The camera watches her walk away, a survivor of hick male cruelty yet again.

As Bettie finds solace and community in the pinup industry, Harron's movie juxtaposes her personal and performative virtuousness with those who consume her. An amateur photographer (part of a club that pays to take pictures of barely clothed models) gasps, "I saw beaver!" thrilled like Beavis and Butt-Head over the mere whiff of sex. One of the Klaws' nerdy clients directs his custom-made image: "I want the young lady to look very strict." Paula sighs, "It takes all types to make a world," offering instruction on self-preservation while also teaching Bettie to wear vinyl and wield whips.

When the federal investigation starts to squeeze the Klaws' business, Bettie sets off on vacation in sunny Miami (these sections of the mostly black-and-white film are shot in color, suggesting a pulsing, vibrant life). Here she poses for Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson), an erstwhile model who rejects the corset Bettie has brought along: "I believe the female form can stand on its own." When one of their nude photos ends up on a Florida postcard, with yellow bikini added, Bettie feels like a star, and indeed, she's dubbed "The Pinup Queen of the Universe."

Her celebrity eventually alarms her boyfriend, serious actor Marvin (Jonathan Woodward), who is shocked, shocked! when he learns what's she's been doing for money (they've met in an acting class, where he avers, "Acting is about truth"). But Marvin's stuffy response is set alongside a fan's question, "Does it make you sick to see guys like me grovel?" Both want the same thing, just differently—to control and possess "the female form."

For Bettie, it's "just silliness." For the movie, it's a broad-based system. The condemnation and the masturbation both emerge from a lack of imagination; The Notorious Bettie Page doesn't pretend to decipher any "real life" Bettie Page (to this day, preaching the gospel). Men can ogle and evaluate all they want. The film's Bettie is what they've made, but she eludes them.

The Notorious Bettie Page

Directed by Mary Harron A Picturehouse release Opens Friday at Ritz Bourse