¡°Lovelace¡± is a biopic on the 1970s porn superstar Linda Lovelace (real name: Linda Boreman), who rose to fame in ¡°Deep Throat,¡± the low-budget hardcore sex comedy that went on to gross something like $600 million. Its story is based almost entirely on ¡°Ordeal,¡± Boreman¡¯s 1980 account of her career in which she claims to have been forced by her abusive, pimp-like husband Chuck Traynor to do the film. Yet dig a little deeper into Boreman¡¯s life and it becomes clear the only proper way to film this story would be like Akira Kurosawa¡¯s ¡°Rashomon,¡± from several different angles: The truth is hazy and the story changes depending on who¡¯s telling it.

This much is known: Boreman¡¯s husband did introduce her to porn, and was controlling, most likely violent as well. But get past that and everything becomes murky. To take one example: In the film we see Amanda Seyfried as the older, anti-porn Boreman saying, ¡°I spent exactly 17 days in the pornography industry,¡± and she blames that entirely on Traynor. ¡°Deep Throat,¡± she says, was her being raped on screen.

But in real life she appeared in ¡°Deep Throat Part II¡± and ¡°Lovelace for President,¡± both of which capitalized on her fame as a porn star, after she divorced Traynor. Also, she is quoted as saying in 1974, again after leaving Traynor, ¡°I¡¯m not going to sit around and say I¡¯ll never do another hardcore film because I was forced into ¡®Deep Throat.¡¯ I did it because I loved it. It was something I believed in, it was me, I was just playing myself.¡± Indeed, Boreman had been cast for a softcore movie in 1976 but ¡ª in the midst of a period of heavy drug use ¡ª she suddenly ¡°found God¡± and refused to do nude scenes.