I think it’s safe to say that most fans of fetish and bondage queen Bettie Page will enjoy seeing her life story (or at least, the kinky part of it) brought to the big screen in Mary Harron’s movie The Notorious Bettie Page, released in the UK on August 4 and starring Gretchen Mol (right). After all, how often do we get to see a movie of any kind — let alone a sympathetic one — about a fetish figure?
But when I saw this affectionate portrayal of post-war pervery’s most enduring icon at an advance press screening in London, I couldn’t help wondering what the British film press would make of the movie. Bettie might be as much of a heroine for British fetish fans as for our American counterparts. But I doubted she would be as widely recognised in mainstream culture here as in the States, where her story is familiar because of the big media fuss there when she was rediscovered a dozen years ago living in Los Angeles.
So how has our UK press received a biopic about a model who may not
be that well known here, played by an actress who also is not yet
exactly a household name in this country? To get an idea, I took a look
at some of the coverage the movie has had here, both prior to and on
the weekend of its UK release…
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