Blonde (2022)

[Eric the Fall Guy]

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[Webslinger]

The first time since watching fellow NC-17 flick Showgirls a few years back where I felt like I needed to take a shower afterward to rinse off all the stink and sleaze. Writing the letterboxd review below last weekend was a cathartic experience.

 

Outside of sumptuous production values and a committed performance from Ana de Armas, Blonde is a reprehensible film. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with making a film about the dark side of celebrity, writer-director Andrew Dominik approaches the many harrowing misfortunes of Marilyn Monroe’s life with such perverse fascination in her suffering that the film feels like it is reveling in its subject’s misery rather than critiquing it. The film has precious little to say about Monroe outside of her status as a victim who lurches defenselessly from one destructive episode to the next, all the while implementing bizarre artistic choices I’m sure Dominik envisioned as “daring” but instead come across as pretentious, unintentionally snicker-inducing, or repugnant (or all three at once, in the case of the much-maligned CGI fetus that temporarily makes the film feel like an avant-garde Pure Flix piece). Not once does the film ever seem interested in Monroe’s psychology or exploring what made her such a beloved public figure in the first place, which ironically makes it feel like yet another thing designed to deprive her of her agency and individuality and reduce her to something a man wants her to be. (Can’t wait to read the retroactive defense that all of this was intended satire all along.) If there’s anything that redeems Blonde, it’s de Armas carrying the film with a performance far, far better than this wretched material deserves. Though the script never seems interested in imbuing Marilyn or Norma Jean with any semblance of humanity, de Armas succeeds in bringing vulnerability and just enough flashes of hope to show us why this character would continue to seek fulfillment in her profession despite the never-ending line of abuse and trauma she faces. To the film’s credit, it does also have some striking recreations of Monroe’s most famous images, and the folks in charge of the film’s various visual and aural craft departments bring their A-game. Unfortunately, it’s all in service of a film that takes such pleasure in inflicting misery on its protagonist and such little interest in commenting on any of it that it just feels like a slimy, poorly considered piece of misery porn.

 

C-