Lovelace type Movie

Consider this … foreplay?

Lovelace, Amanda Seyfried’s drama about the dark life of a true-life 1970s-era pornstar, makes its debut a week from now at the Sundance Film Festival, and the producers have released this new image from the movie. Given its subject matter, if the film isn’t one of the most provocative of the festival, it’s doing something wrong.

Image zoom Dale Robinette

Seyfried stars as porn actress Linda Lovelace, of 1972’s Deep Throat fame, whose films were part of the mainstreaming of X-rated movies before she renounced that life and became an anti-porn crusader under her own name, Linda Boreman.

Lovelace is directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who opened Sundance two years ago with another story of the counter-culture, Howl, which dramatized the obscenity trial surrounding Allen Ginsberg iconic poem.

Sharon Stone, Juno Temple, Wes Bentley, Hank Azaria (in the directors chair), Robert Patrick, Bobby Cannavale (partially obscured in the upper right corner), and Chris Noth (standing beside the camera) co-star in Lovelace. Peter Sarsgaard also stars as Lovelace’s husband, Chuck Traynor, the man she later claimed abused her and coerced her into the porn world. James Franco will appear as Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, and Adam Brody (seated in the chair) is fellow porn actor Harry Reems.

Last year at Sundance was a harrowing time for Lovelace, which was in the middle of production when Demi Moore had a health meltdown and dropped out of her role as feminist activist Gloria Steinem. The filmmakers were scrambling to fill the role so production would not be disrupted and quickly hired Sarah Jessica Parker.

A year later, it will make its debut up in the snowy hills of Park City, Utah. The festival starts this Thursday and runs through Jan. 25.

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