Documentarian Ryan White has a new film out on Netflix, an intimate portrait of a woman whom many may think they already know intimately — though not at all. “Pamela, a Love Story’ is perhaps the first time we’ve heard the life story of Pamela Anderson from Anderson herself, honest, unvarnished, raw and vulnerable.
In the wake of the critically lauded Hulu series “Pam & Tommy,” in which Lily James and Sebastian Stan starred as Anderson and ex-husband Tommy Lee, “Pamela, a Love Story” feels like an important corrective to the record. While “Pam & Tommy” managed to unpack the toxicity of the tabloid story that was the Anderson/Lee sex tape — the first viral video — and illustrate the ways in which Anderson was horrifically maligned in the public eye and in legal proceedings, the dramedy series still took some creative liberties with the story itself, and Anderson dismissed the project, unwilling to revisit that difficult and damaging time in her life.
White’s film is about Anderson’s many love stories, but the most profound love story he captures is the one she embarks on with herself. Over the course of the film, Anderson sifts through the many VHS tapes and journals with which she documented her life, and tells the audience her story, honestly, with humor, wearing no makeup, at home in British Columbia, sitting with her sons, Brandon and Dylan Lee (Brandon is a producer on the film). Ultimately, we come to know Anderson as a person, not a sex object, a far cry from what was expected for her over the course of her 30 year career.
