‘Blonde’ Movie Review (Venice Film Festival 2022): Ana de Armas Turns In A Bravura Performance as Marilyn Monroe In This Dark Biopic Destined For Divisiveness

Starting with 2016’s The People vs. O.J. Simpson, depictions of misunderstood cultural figures who faced unfair treatment at the hands of a cruel public have washed over film and television. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, an expressionistic interpretation of Marilyn Monroe’s life and legacy, might seem to fit this model at first glance. But unlike the Ryan Murphy-fied version of culture, this movie is not out to flatter its audience for simply coming to the realization that culture did her dirty. And he makes it searingly clear that such a belated appreciation is cold comfort to her corpse.

Blonde is not content to simply provide a portrait of the iconic blonde bombshell through the committed performance of Ana de Armas. Plenty of documentaries about the scintillating subject exist should anyone just want the Wikipedia page read to them. This is a phantasmagoric look at the Hollywood machine to rival the abject psychological terror of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. It’s a film more comfortable with making suggestions than statements, conveying the sickness of stardom through an inescapable visual and narrative malaise.

These dark adult themes are far more harrowing than the adult acts that earned Blonde a rare NC-17 rating for “some sexual content.” The MPAA’s rating smacks of courted controversy, akin to Harvey Weinstein’s repeated battles with the rating’s board for free publicity. The film’s depiction of sexuality is not meant to titillate, even when Marilyn gets to wield it herself. It’s primarily a blunt instrument of physical force used to keep her in line as she enters and emerges into the industry.

Dominik filters the entire film through the lens of how this sordid pipeline turns people into placeholders for desire. The male-dominated business transforms Los Angeles into a paternal wasteland as men only show interest in philandering, not fathering. Contemplating how little has changed from Marilyn’s time to the ruthless rule of Weinstein – and countless predators who remain ensconced in power – is just as scary as anything unfolding on screen.

This exploitative, extractive environment chews up the real Norma Jeane Mortensen, an impoverished ward of the state of California, and spits her out as the surreal screen creation Marilyn Monroe. She enters a career in acting as a trained thespian, studying Method technique with Lee Strasberg, only to find no one cares about the brain underneath her blonde hair. Alluding to Dostoyevsky earns her a repudiation during an audition. Even playwright Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), who would later become Marilyn’s husband, reacts with incredulity when she cites Chekhov in their first conversation. She was born to be an actress but cursed to become a star.

In the heyday of classical Hollywood, there was simply no way to reconcile her smarts and sexuality – so most in power chose to ignore the former and double down on the latter as they minted her image. It’s in this wide chasm between person and persona that Ana de Armas’ characterization of Marilyn Monroe resides. She is terrifyingly trapped in a perpetual present tense with so much for her to run from and so little to run toward. She has no interest in returning to the traumatic past of abuse by her single mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), and all her attempts to create a future by bearing a child end up thwarted.

As the blinding lights of the industry bear down on her with increasing ferocity, Marilyn’s inner darkness takes over and squelches whatever lingering vestiges of Norma Jeane still exist. de Armas plays the actress less as an unimpeachable historical figure and more like a scream queen losing her mind before the audience’s eyes. Her devastatingly dedicated performance is refreshingly free of hoary biopic clichés and easy imitation. Pre-release complaints about de Armas’ accent as indicative of a larger inability to capture the actress’ essence in Blonde prove wildly overblown as she nimbly conveys the sparkle, smarts, and sadness of Marilyn Monroe. When the film splices de Armas into footage from films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, it takes a while to register that the figure on-screen is not actually Marilyn herself.

But mere mimicry is not the point of Blonde. de Armas’ bravura performance works so well because every choice is calibrated in service of the project’s larger aim, which is not so much portraiture as it is a parable. She’s not just meant for admiration like some type of wax figure, and this less conventional style may alienate those seeking more a traditional portrayal. Dominik happily takes this risk. He shows not just Marilyn herself but also what other people project onto her.

The film uses her infamous, egregious example to illuminate the institutions of abuse that enabled a descent into depression. With maximalist fervor, the film deconstructs desire itself to show the damage done to Marilyn Monroe. When the camera provides a POV shot from inside her womb, the perverse provocation feels like an appropriate escalation. Dominik is not afraid to taunt his audience with the logical extension of their invasive gaze and make them feel dirty for it.

The aesthetic stylization Dominik brings to bear is practically assaultive in its aggressiveness. Blonde shifts between aspect ratios and colors on a scene-to-scene basis, reflecting the cinematic grammar of the film playing in the characters’ heads. It also drives home just how many formats in which Marilyn was consumed before the culture consumed her. Trying to keep up with the exhausting internal logic is somewhat futile – just submit to Dominik’s pummeling vision. Blonde’s visual schema may be inconsistent, but it is not ineffective.

Dominik also punctuates the film’s 166-minute runtime with conspicuous visual flourishes meant to further explode stodgy conventions and increase Blonde’s pervasive sense of unreality. These brash bursts of cinematic energy are spotty in their effectiveness, especially those that just feel loud for their own sake. But overall, they serve a larger purpose of aligning the audience with Marilyn’s own loss of bearing in reality. The ones that work best find idiosyncratic expression for unseen elements of Marilyn’s interior life, such as animating how she activated the Method technique of sense memory in her on-screen acting … or literalizing the horror of her final days as she becomes unmoored from time and space alike.

But no amount of directorial trickery can outdo the simple devastation of what must be Marilyn’s most repeated word in the film: “daddy.” After growing up without such a male presence in her childhood, she looks for paternal validation in both her professional and personal life. Yet she’s doomed to search for an authoritative figure in a land of lusty boys, a cosmic tragedy Dominik quite literally writes in the stars. Blonde may well be the definitive feel-bad biopic, one designed not to inspire pity but to dole out punishment. It’s destined for divisiveness but deserves full consideration for its intellectual merits, not just its emotionally enticing looks – just like Marilyn Monroe herself did.

Blonde made its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, and will be available to stream exclusively on Netflix starting on September 28, 2022.

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, Little White Lies and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.