BLONDE*****

 

Andrew Dominik is a director of rare talent. THE ASSASSSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD remains one of my all-time favourite films, and its worth considering BLONDE in that context. Because as with that film, BLONDE is about exploring the reality behind an avatar, a myth, an icon, and about trying to find some kind of emotional truth in a story that everyone thinks they know.

It is also worth stating, given some of the criticism that has been levelled at this film, that neither the film nor the book by Joyce Carol Oates upon which it is based, are meant to be straight biographies. Oates states very clearly in her prologue that if you want a factual, historic book about Marilyn Monroe, then this isn't what Blonde provides. Instead, she and Dominik are creating broad categories of experience, inspired by the known facts, and partly by speculation, to interrogate the myth of Marilyn Monroe and the lived emotional experience of what it could have been like to be Norma Jeane. If you approach both the book and film from that perspective, you will reap dividends.

The film is faithful to the book but adds something further thanks to a sensitive, vulnerable, brave performance from Ana De Armas as Norma Jeane, and Dominik's deep knowledge of, and visual invention around Monroe's iconic films, looks and performances. There's a moment where we see Armas' character in tears facing herself in a mirror and putting on the megawatt smile of Marilyn. It's a masterclass in acting the part of a woman who feels alienated from her own creation. Behind the lens, Dominik's use of black and white versus colour and different shooting techniques adds to the impression of a woman so divorced from her own image that the centre cannot and does not hold.

We begin with Norma Jeane's horrific childhood in Hollywood - at first at the hands of a mentally ill mother, then in and out of foster homes, and escaping early into a marriage. We then fast forward to Marilyn in Hollywood, a pin-up star who is raped by Mr Z at her first audition. This movie does not shy away from the sexual empowerment of Norma Jeane and the sexual exploitation of Marilyn Monroe. She isn't always a victim. She chooses her first polyamorous relationship and her two marriages. She also chooses to leave The Former Sports Star (Bobby Cannavale) when he beats her. And in her professional life, as in that aforementioned scene, Norma Jeane is able to put on Marilyn the character for her own financial advantage and is also able to out argue The Writer about his plays. We see her negotiating pay with her agent. Norma Jeane has agency and control.

But as Marilyn, she is serially exploited on and off screen, by producers who rape her, directors who condescend to her, and finally by the President who rapes her, then aborts her child. This last flight of imagination is the most controversial in reviews of the film, but I feel gets to the emotional truth of how the inspiration for The President treated the women in his life, and how powerful men treated Marilyn. Did JFK actually knock her up then abort the baby? I have no idea. What this film is saying is something truthful about power-relationships then and now. I also found it painful to watch how graphic the scene with the President was, but it felt it was absolutely right to show it that way. The film shows the reality of sexual exploitation. It does't cut away. But it also doesn't frame it in a way that is fetishising the actor's body. It focuses on her face, her reactions, her internal monologue as she's experiencing the abuse. How can you tell a truthful story about this woman without showing that?

As you can tell, I both really admired this film and got really frustrated by the reactions to it. I feel that people aren't judging it on its own terms but as something that it isn't: a truthful by the numbers biopic. And in doing so, they are missing out on a vital, provocative and incredibly well-acted account of a woman who attempted to wrestle Hollywood to the floor and got stomped on in the process. 

BLONDE has a running time of 166 minutes and is streaming on Netflix.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP

Jane Austen's novel Lady Susan is an odd fowl - full of the same sparkling wit as her more well-known novels, but with none of their moral conservatism. After all, Austen's best-loved heroines are those that go on journeys of self-awareness and humbling. Emma, Lizzie and Marianne misjudge their love interests, and though, clever, must be humbled before ending up married under the benevolent guidance of their rich older husbands.  In her later novels, it is the men who must do the learning, but nonetheless the novels are conservative in their final choices.  Both Fanny Price and Anne Elliot are ultimately rewarded for their quiet virtue when flashier rivals have been undone.  

By contrast, Austen's Lady Susan is a quite radical novel, and one utterly in contrast with the novels published either in or shortly after her lifetime.  The eponymous heroine has all the sparkling brilliance and beauty of a Lizzie or Emma, but also something of the hard-hearted cynicism and slippery morality of a Becky Sharp.  As a result, the novel and indeed this wonderful new film adaptation, feel rather more like Oscar Wilde than a more staid costume drama.  And this feeling of brilliance mischief is only enhanced by Whit Stillman's superb feeling for comic timing and framing.

Lady Susan is a beautiful, clever but impoverished widow in the late eighteenth century. She's conducting an affair with the divine but married Lord Manwaring, but must simultaneously find both herself and her daughter good husbands. She begins by flirting with her brother-in-law, Reginald de Courcy who is closer in age to her meek daughter Frederica, while trying to foist Frederica on the dull-witted Sir James Martin.  Meanwhile the de Courcy family would of course far prefer the virtuous Frederica for a daughter-in-law, and Lady Susan would rather like to have her cake and eat it.

In Whit Stillman's retelling of this story we move through the various flirtations and marriage plots at a brisk pace and with crackling wit. In a sense, we are in familiar territory to Stillman's DAMSELS IN DISTRESS. For Kate Beckinsale's Lady Susan is very much like Greta Gerwig's Violet - tremendously self-assured and clever and yet brutally bossy and unaware of how absurd half of her pronouncements are.   The best thing you can say about the casting is that you're simultaneously enchanted by Susan and horrified by her.  Indeed, I left the film with a profound regret that Beckinsale has been shoe-horned into schlock B-roles in Hollywood when she could've become a fine dramatic or comedic actress, and certainly someone I would've loved to see play Becky Sharp.

The supporting cast is brilliant although it's the unknown names that shine. Indeed, Chloe Sevigny and Stephen Fry are rather wasted in the smaller roles of Mr and Mrs Johnson - a sly joke being that she will be punished by being taken back to Connecticut ("My dear, you might be scalped!")  There's far more fun to be had watching Tom Bennett as Sir James - in fact, I'd go so far as to say that he almost steals the movie.  And Justin Edwards is superbly funny in a smaller role as Charles Vernon.

The resulting film is laugh out loud funny and satisfyingly cocks-a-snoop at all the predictable morality of classic costume drama.  All the women are clever, even the ones who initially look meek, and all the men are puppets whose emotions and fortunes are directed by them.  To that end, I suspect this might tempt fans of writers such as Thackery and Trollope as well as the Austen fans out there. The only slightly bizarre thing is why Whit Stillman decided to rename Lady Susan as LOVE & FRIENDSHIP unless poking fun at a movie that might have easily been called SEX & MONEY?

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated U.  The movie played Sundance 2016 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Kuwait and Canada. It opens in Norway on June 17th, in France on June 22nd, in Poland on June 24th, in Portugal on June 30th, in Australia on July 31st, in Denmark on August 11th, in Taiwan on September 2nd, in Sweden on September 23rd and in Brazil on October 27th.