Lovelace may be a movie about a porn star, but it’s not pornographic. At least, not sexually.

Given all the ways a project like this could have gone wrong, the result is surprisingly good on several fronts, beginning with a shrewd structure that fosters an intelligent dual perspective on the public and private aspects of the Deep Throat phenomenon.

It’s too short to do justice to its subject, but in an era when young women build careers and get rich off “secret” sex tapes that somehow make their way onto the Internet, maybe that’s all this subject deserves. Lovelace was but an aberration, an amusing, then quaintly grim footnote on our way to a Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian future.

Though Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's handsomely mounted period piece evokes the era with impressive detail, Lovelace's journey remains difficult to tell.

The pleasures of Lovelace are in its casting choices, allowing a brio trio like Sarsgaard, Hank Azaria and Bobby Cannavale to sleaze up a pivotal scene, and an unrecognizable Sharon Stone to go full Jessica Lange as Linda's shamed mother.