In New York in the mid-fifties an undercover cop buys some S&M magazines at a seedy bookstore, and after the subsequent bust a Senate hearing is set up with a moralist senator (Strathairn) in the chair.

The main model in the magazines is Bettie Page (Mol), who is called to testify. As the film flashbacks through her life we witness early traumas before Bettie manages to secure a flat and a job in New York with ease. Soon she is taking acting lessons, but also supplementing her income by shooting glamour shots for local photographers. Soon she sheds her inhibitions and becomes an in-demand model for fetish mag producers, but never becomes hardbitten by her trade.

Set in what seems such innocent times, especially with what is available on sale now, this harks back to America's period of navel gazing. Having floundered through prohibition and the McCarthy scourges of Hollywood, the next on the list was the girlie mag industry. An outraged cleric thunders that pornography is worse than Communism because the latter is an outside menace that can be defeated, but pornography eats away at our youth from within.

Bettie is depicted as an innocent abroad in what could hardly be called a sea of vice. The films that she appears in are more comic than sexy and the poses she fills with other models also riase a snigger, but these were very popular in her day. The people that she worked for are also depicted as amateurs rather than particularly evil characters, especially in the form of Lily Taylor, one half of a husband and wife mail order and star snapshot team that are frequently worrying over the Post Office stopping their distribution.

Bettie is seen as all too keen to shed her clothes, and it is up to the photographers to make her cover herself through fear of prosecution. Even then, despite the hints of childhood abuse, a punch happy early marriage, and a gang bang in Nashville, Bettie seems to think it is something almost frivolous. Certainly she puts more energies into her acting classes where at one stage she attempts a strip to represent a quiet moment at home.

Mary Hannon delivers a film with the flavours of the Fifties, but even with the music, clothes and black and white photography it seems a little slow paced. Mol is wholesome enough but never gets into second gear, and this tries to be dramatic and light-hearted at the same time, but never really hits those targets straight on.