Gretchen Mol is finally the key to the mysterious appeal of the film, to its sweetness and sadness.Read Full Review »
83
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Owen Gleiberman
The movie, in a sense, is just like Bettie's photos: all glorious surface. The Notorious Bettie Page captures, with seductive finesse, how Bettie Page happened, yet what it leaves us with is the tantalizing enigma of a girl who couldn't truly be ''bad'' because she made sex divinely delicious.Read Full Review »
80
Salon.com: Stephanie Zacharek
A picture that's fully open to some pretty rough truths. But it's also a joyful, heartfelt movie, one that speaks to the openness and vitality we see in Bettie's pictures.Read Full Review »
75
ROLLING STONE: Peter Travers
Harron needed just the right actress to play Bettie. And she lucked out big time. Gretchen Mol (The Shape of Things) is hot stuff in every sense of the term. She delivers the first performance by an actress this year that deserves serious Oscar consideration.Read Full Review »
75
ReelViews: James Berardinelli
The film takes a little time to explore the political landscape of the time, and features an Oscar-worthy lead performance.Read Full Review »
70
The New York Times: Manohla Dargis
Principally a work of gorgeous surfaces, shot mostly in silvery black-and-white film by the cinematographer Mott Hupfel, with an occasional splash of saturated color.Read Full Review »
70
Time: Richard Schickel
This cheeky movie does not impose heavy-duty meaning on Page's life and times. It just lets us draw our own ambiguous conclusions about what she did. It is the better, the more enticing, for so doing.Read Full Review »
70
Slate: Troy Patterson
Harron, working from a script she wrote with Guinevere Turner, doesn't solve the inherent problems of that narrative, but she evades them quite elegantly. She's made a poem instead of a biopic, an ode to intuition, iconography, seamed stockings, and star power.Read Full Review »
70
Washington Post: Stephen Hunter
Director Mary Harron may have more courage than talent -- and she's got a lot of talent. It's too bad Bettie's story isn't more dramatic.Read Full Review »
63
Philadelphia Inquirer: Carrie Rickey
In the odd, and oddly compelling, biopic The Notorious Bettie Page, Gretchen Mol is a delight as the saucy brunette.Read Full Review »
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