Blondes definitely don’t have more fun in this feverishly-anticipated and controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic. So, buckle up, because you’re in for a gruelling ride.
To lure you in there’s a dazzling recreation of the iconic up-skirting scene from Seven Year Itch, where a subway vent breeze makes Marilyn’s (Ana de Armas) white dress billow up, exposing her pants.
We then flashback to her as seven-year-old Norma Jeane and some brutal (yet oh-so-ravishingly shot) child’s eye scenes of abuse whose impact will define Monroe’s entire existence.
Raised in poverty by an alcoholic, mentally disturbed mother (Mare of Easttown,’s Julianne Nicholson), who eventually tries to drown her, Norma spends a lifetime looking for a ‘daddy’ to rescue her, before she succumbs to an early death by overdose, aged just 36.
Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s doorstep novel (i.e. not biography) by writer-director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), Blonde is an episodic fever dream, or rather, nightmare, of a movie, that similarly blurs fact with fiction.
Switching in and out of black and white, it’s an unrelenting catalogue of trauma, assault, and abuse – after one hour and 15 minutes, I wasn’t sure how much more I could take, and that was before the notorious graphic close-up of Monroe performing a sex act on J.F.K.
I’d be interested to see how many viewers stay the course on Netflix. It makes a Lars Von Trier ordeal movie look like Legally Blonde.
The thrust here is that Monroe was a fragile, psychologically scarred victim, whose relationship with fame was entirely self-punishing.
In fact, it’s not just the thrust, that’s the entire movie.
And at pushing three hours, you’ll have plenty of time to wonder: wasn’t there more to this smart, brilliantly talented woman than that?
And is what director Andrew Dominik doing with Blonde really that different to those Hollywood studio bosses who controlled Monroe’s image, and commodified her into a ‘sex bomb’?
What keeps you riveted is Ana de Armas’s radiant, Oscar-worthy turn as Monroe.
The Cuban actress magnetically captures that breathy, baby doll voice and even something of Monroe’s legendary physicality, despite an entirely dissimilar physique.
Some of the recreation scenes are uncanny. If only she wasn’t required to spend so much of this movie either sobbing or naked or both.
Blonde is available to stream on Netflix from September 28.
