Cert 18
93 mins
BBFC advice: Contains strong sex and sex references and domestic abuse
Today's award for most eclectic film catalogue in recent years goes to...Amanda Seyfried.
Ok, there are very good cases for Michelle Williams, Michael Fassbender and James Franco (he appears in this), but I reckon Seyfried tops them.
Why? Because none of the above have worked on a movie as cheesy as Mama Mia, played a key role in a musical (Les Miserables) or been the lead voice in a hit animation (Epic).
Seyfried's rise in critical estimation is all the more impressive because she has been able to combine cutting-edge with mainstream with equal aplomb.
Here she is wonderful as Linda Lovelace, a name synonymous with 1970s pornography.
And her performance is so utterly committed that by the end of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's movie, my view of Lovelace had correctly transformed from that of a moral-free self-publicist to that of a pawn of a wife-beater.
The movie picks up her story just before a meeting with Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), the pornographer who took her away from her strict parents and brought her to the height of infamy.
Sarsgaard is brilliant - first charming and then progressively more unhinged as the money-grabbing drug addict.
But the most remarkable performance is of Sharon Stone as Lovelace's puritanical mother. I simply didn't recognise her and her identity was only revealed when just read through the cast list - 15 hours after watching the picture.
Lovelace oozes sleaze, from Traynor to Deep Throat's producer (Chris Noth) to its director (Hank Azaria).
But it it is far from sexy despite a couple of nude scenes involving Seyfried and Sarsgaard.
The reality is that this is a movie about morals and domestic abuse and provides a salutory tale.
Its superb cast have brought it from the art house circuit into the mainstream.
Laughs: none
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: yes
Overall rating: 8/10