When the actor Lily James got the role of "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson in the television series "Pam & Tommy", she wrote a handwritten letter to Anderson that remained unopened.

Pamela Anderson didn't want the incident the series revolves around - when a stolen home video of a sex act went viral on the young internet - to be discussed again.

"Pam & Tommy",

which according to the director would highlight how badly women were treated in the past, was experienced by Anderson as an insult.

With the documentary "Pamela, a love story", she joins a group of women who felt compelled to tell their own story after having private sexual experiences exposed to the world during the 90s and 00s (among others Monica Lewinsky and Paris Hilton). .

We meet Pamela in her hometown of Ladysmith in Canada.

She is without make-up and the environment is barren so that you can feel how close we are to the star.

And most of it is dealt with in the documentary's scant two hours: The career as a Playboy model, the acting breakthrough in "Baywatch", the marriages, the children, the animal rights activism, the abuse and of course the video tape, which she believes ruined her career.

It is often touching

.

Pamela reflects on her often impossible relationship with men and her quest to be taken seriously.

The documentary (which has one of her sons as a co-producer) is keen to be personal and emotionally charged, which ironically means that in terms of mood it often lands quite close to "Pam & Tommy".

The problem with documentaries where the subject himself gets to direct and is not challenged is that it gets boring in the long run.

Potentially interesting topics are rushed past: Anderson has sat in on Vladimir Putin after urging him to act against the trade in seal products.

But we don't get to know how she views Putin in general.

We learn that she is friends with and supports Julian Assange, but not why she chose to get involved in his case.

She has previously said that post-metoo feminism has gone too far and is boring, but that issue is not discussed at all.

I think "Pamela, a love story" would have gained a lot by giving its protagonist some much-needed chewing resistance.