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The film itself features graphic scenes of sexual abuse, including a rape scene, as well as Monroe having an abortion, and a miscarriage. Monroe’s official estate defended de Armas’ casting, stating, “Marilyn Monroe is a singular Hollywood and pop culture icon that transcends generations and history. Any actor that steps into that role knows they have big shoes to fill. Based on the trailer alone, it looks like Ana was a great casting choice as she captures Marilyn’s glamour, humanity and vulnerability. We can’t wait to see the film in its entirety!” Actor Casey Affleck also praised the film, stating, “I’ve seen a couple of versions of Blonde and it’s taken him Dominik a long time to get it out into the world. But that’s just how he is. He’s so slow with it. And it’s an amazing, beautiful film.”
A lengthy, extreme close-up of a drugged-up Monroe fellating President Kennedy while he’s on the phone in a hotel room also feels gratuitous and is probably why the film has earned a rare NC-17 rating. The film also received eight nominations at the 43rd Golden Raspberry Awards, winning Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. She and her sister are both blondes. He’s been a blond his whole life.
Following standout supporting turns in movies like “Knives Out” and “No Time to Die,” as well as the delicious trash that was “Deep Water,” here is finally the meaty, leading role that showcases all she can do. She’s doing the breathy, girlish voice, but not perfectly—traces of her Cuban accent are unmistakable—and that’s OK given the film’s unorthodox approach. Certainly, some of this is accurate—the way Hollywood power brokers regarded her as a pretty face and a great ass when she wanted them to consider her a serious actress and love her for her soul. Sometimes it’s a light tear or two as she draws from her traumatic childhood for an acting class exercise. That’s more exciting than the typical biography that plays the greatest hits of a celebrity’s life in formulaic fashion, and “Blonde” is consistently inventive as it toys with both tone and form.
Currently you are able to watch “Blonde” streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads. Watch similar movies on Apple TV for free Currently available on 2 streaming services. It doesn’t matter how well-acted or creatively filmed it is — watching Blonde is a really unpleasant experience. Ana de Armas’ luminous performance makes it difficult to look away, but Blonde can be hard to watch as it teeters between commenting on exploitation and contributing to it. Two of the boys are blond like their dad.
Dominik noticed de Armas’s performance in Knock Knock, and while she went through a long casting process, Dominik secured her the role after the first audition. In March 2019, it was announced that Ana de Armas was in early negotiations to star in the film, replacing Chastain. In June 2012, it was announced Plan B Entertainment would produce the film, with Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner serving as producers, but Watts’ participation was in question, as “it’s likely that the filmmakers would go in a different direction,” according to the report. During this time, Dominik directed the crime drama Killing Them Softly (2012), starring Brad Pitt, who subsequently became interested in the project. Principal photography on the film did not commence, with Dominik later stating he hoped it would be his next film, with production commencing in 2013. In May 2010, it was announced that Naomi Watts would star in the film as Monroe, and that the production, which at this point cost an estimated $20 million, was slated to begin principal photography in January 2011.
Blonde was set to premiere at 2021 Venice Film Festival, but Netflix was unhappy with the final cut it received, and hired Jennifer Lame to help. “We were asking for permission in a way. Everyone felt a huge responsibility, and we were very aware of the side of the story we were going to tell—the story of Norma Jeane, the person behind this character, Marilyn Monroe. Who was she really?”, she said. “I think she was happy. She would also throw things off the wall sometimes and get mad if she didn’t like something. Maybe this sounds very mystical, but it is true. We all felt it.” De Armas later told AnOther magazine that everyone in the crew wrote a message to Monroe in a big card, then they went to the cemetery and put it on her grave. During Blonde’s press conference at the 79th Venice Film Festival, Dominik said that the initial scenes of the film were shot in the same apartment where Monroe had lived with her mother. In April 2022, Dominik confirmed that the filming was finished in July 2021, following the shutdowns as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and that post-production had also been finished. De Armas considered her relationship with Dominik to be the most collaborative of her career, remarking, “Yes, I have had collaborative relationships, but to get phone calls at midnight because he has an idea and he can’t sleep and all of a sudden you can’t sleep for the same reason.” De Armas read Oates’ novel and also said she studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, and films.
“As film and TV shapes many people’s understanding of sexual and reproductive health, it’s critical these depictions accurately portray women’s real decisions and experiences. While abortion is safe, essential health care, anti-abortion zealots have long contributed to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy. Andrew Dominik’s new film, ‘Blonde,’ bolsters their message with a CGI-talking fetus, depicted to look like a fully-formed baby.” Planned Parenthood accused the film of delivering an anti-abortion message about Monroe’s abortion, releasing the following statement to The Hollywood Reporter saying the film was rooted in anti-abortion propaganda; Writing for IndieWire, Samantha Bergeson claimed the film makes an anti-abortion statement by showing a CGI fetus talking to Monroe. Speaking on the rating in an interview with Screen Daily, Andrew Dominik stated, “It’s a demanding movie—it is what it is, it says what it says. And if the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office,” adding, “If I look at an episode of Euphoria, it’s far more graphic than anything going on in Blonde”.
She feels disconnected from her onscreen performance at the film’s premiere, saying it is not her. It is the first NC-17-rated film to be released exclusively to a streaming service. As for the film’s many graphic moments—including one from the perspective of an airplane toilet, as if Marilyn is puking up pills and champagne directly on us—one wonders what the point is. And it becomes clear as the movie progresses that they’re the only men who loved her for her true self as Norma Jeane while also appreciating the beguiling artifice of Marilyn. Sometimes, the color palette is faded, as if we’re looking at Marilyn in a long-ago photograph.
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it “a must-see”, yet also “a work of such wild excesses and questionable cruelty”. Blonde was controversial among critics and audiences alike and was described as a “complicated, highly divisive film”. The film also had a limited theatrical release in New York City that began on September 16, 2022, and in other locations on September 23, 2022.
“I don’t think the movie is anti-pro choice. I don’t think it is at all. And I’m not convinced that she actually wants to have a baby. I think she has feelings about not having a baby, but I’m not convinced that what she’s doing – I mean, she doesn’t end up having one. … There’s a wish for baby but there’s a fear of baby, and I think that’s kind of the central stressor on her.” Blonde sparked some controversy when its NC-17 rating (meaning adults only) was confirmed, raising concerns that it would be exploitative in its depiction of Monroe. Regarding her accent, Dominik told Screen Daily in February 2022 that there was “work involved” in making the actress “sound American”. Upon the trailers’ release, de Armas’ casting as Monroe received some backlash as some viewers felt her ethnic background did not entirely match Monroe’s, with complaints that she still maintained her native Cuban accent. Jessie Thompson of The Independent gave the film one star out of five, stating; “Blonde is not a bad film because it is degrading, exploitative and misogynist, even though it is all of those things. It’s bad because it’s boring, pleased with itself and doesn’t have a clue what it’s trying to say.” Writing for Time, Stephanie Zacharek criticized Dominik for allowing “no room for the real-life Marilyn’s multidimensionality”, asserting that “Marilyn—the brilliant, perceptive if often difficult performer—is almost nowhere to be seen in Andrew Dominik’s willfully clueless Freudian fantasy Blonde”.
Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Tracey Landon, Brad Pitt, and Scott Robertson produced the film. Blonde is a 2022 American biographical psychological drama film written and directed by Andrew Dominik, based on the 2000 novel by Joyce Carol Oates.
While trying to get a break into the acting world, she is raped by film studio president Mr. Z. In 1951, she auditions for the role of Nell in Don’t Bother to Knock; the audition goes awry when she breaks down and leaves in tears, but impresses the casting director enough to give her the part. Days later, Norma Jeane is sent to an orphanage while Gladys is admitted to a mental hospital, having been declared unfit to raise a child. Blonde received eight nominations at the 43rd Golden Raspberry Awards, winning Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay, while De Armas was nominated for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and SAG Award for Best Actress. It began a limited theatrical release in the US on September 16, before its streaming release on September 28 by Netflix. Blonde premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 8, 2022, where it received a 14-minute standing ovation. The film plays with shifting aspect ratios and alternates between color and black and white.
The Guardian’s Leslie Felperin described the film as “ravishing, moving and intensely irritating” but ultimately “all a bit much”, and assigned it a rating of three stars out of five. In GQ, Jack King’s review also noted how the film shifts from a “traditional biopic” to “a movie unrelenting in its brutality”. Real footage from Monroe’s filmography is used in this movie mixed in with scenes recreated by Ana de Armas, who was placed in the films All About Eve (1950), Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), Niagara (1953), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Some Like It Hot (1959).
Suzie Kennedy, an English Marilyn Monroe impersonator and historian for over twenty years, openly despised the film, calling it “a terrible movie… an absolute assassination of Marilyn Monroe’s legacy… an assassination of an icon,” and that it “capitalized on and exploited the deep sadness of Marilyn’s life.” Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar called Blonde a “great film” and praised Ana de Armas for portraying Monroe in “a chillingly real way.” He later argued that de Armas deserved to win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. In a very positive review, IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha called the film a “dreamlike fictional biopic about Marilyn Monroe” that features “a stunning, volatile performance from Ana de Armas, whose daring vulnerability is matched by director Andrew Dominik’s equally daring formal approach”. Praise was directed towards de Armas’s performance, but the response to the writing and Dominik’s depiction of Monroe’s life polarized critics; some found the film’s spin on the traditional biopic refreshing, while others criticized it as exploitative, sexist, and dehumanizing.
Login to use TMDB’s new rating system. De Armas received nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and SAG Award for Best Actress. The movie has moved up the charts by 3475 places since yesterday. There aren’t any free streaming options for Blonde right now.
Monroe’s death scene was also filmed in the same room where she died in real life. For Dominik, Blonde was his first attempt at developing a film featuring a woman at the center of the story. Andrew Dominik, who directed the film and served as screenwriter, had begun developing the project as early as 2010, which is an adaptation of the novel Blonde (2000), a fictional and controversial account of Monroe’s life—and a Pulitzer Prize finalist—by Joyce Carol Oates. During a read-through, her performance impresses everyone except Miller, but he eventually warms up to her when she gives him some insightful character analysis.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety called de Armas’ work “a performance … of breathtaking shimmer and imagination and candor and heartbreak.” Deadline Hollywood’s Damon Wise stated the film is an “astonishing” way to tell Monroe’s life in a fictional sense, as it is “presented as a horror movie in the surreal, nightmarish style” comparable to the films of David Lynch, especially Mulholland Drive (2001). In an interview with fashion magazine L’Officiel Italia, de Armas echoed the sentiment, saying, “I don’t understand why it happened. I can cite a number of programs or movies that are much more explicit and with a lot more sexual content than Blonde. But to tell this story it’s important to show all those moments in Marilyn’s life that brought her to the end she did. It needs to be explained. In the cast everyone knew we should delve into unpleasant territory, it wasn’t just up to me”. “At times, the movie feels like a slaughterhouse seen from the animal’s point of view” wrote Bilge Ebiri in his review for Vulture, remarking on the film’s tendency to elicit strong reactions and emotions from an audience by putting together what he described as a “captivating and terrifying” jigsaw puzzle of Monroe’s life. The film received polarized reviews from critics and audiences; while de Armas’s performance garnered praise, the fictionalization of Monroe’s life was considered exploitative and the screenplay was criticized. Steph Herold, who researches reproductive health at the University of California at San Francisco and studies abortion depiction in films and television shows, said the scene in which Monroe’s character speaks to the fetus “totally infantilized her in ways that I’ve only seen in anti-abortion propaganda-type movies,” Herold said; “I was pretty shocked by it, especially given the platform and the mainstream quality of this movie.” In a piece for GQ, Keith Phipps argues that Blonde, being an exception from the commercial stigma of having an NC-17 rating due to its exclusive release on a streaming platform, could usher in a new era of films and filmmakers that will “push beyond the restrictions of the R rating”, writing, “In theory, the NC-17 rating could thrive on services like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max and Blonde could be a sign of things to come, possibly serving as a cue for other filmmakers to push beyond the restrictions of the R rating.”
The film is a fictionalized interpretation of the life and career of American actress Marilyn Monroe, played by Ana de Armas. Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. All her joyous times are tinged with sadness because we know how this story ends. Sometimes, the sound design is muted—as in her classic performance of “I Wanna Be Loved by You” from “Some Like It Hot”—to indicate the confusion of her inner state. As Marilyn Monroe—or her real name of Norma Jeane, as she’s mostly called in the film—Ana de Armas is asked to cry.
It touches on a series of actual, factual events as a road map, from her movies to her marriages. It’s as much a biopic of the film star as “Elvis” is a biopic of Elvis Presley. My personal breaking point was a POV shot from inside Marilyn’s vagina as she was having a forced abortion performed on her. And yet writer/director Andrew Dominik’s film, based on the fictional novel by Joyce Carol Oates, remains technically impeccable throughout, even though it feels like an overlong odyssey at nearly three hours. “Blonde” abuses and exploits Marilyn Monroe all over again, the way so many men did over the cultural icon’s tragic, too-short life.
As an adjective, blond and blonde both blonde action describe hair that is yellow or very light brown (“short blond/blonde hair”) and someone who has hair of that color (“three blond/blonde kids”). You can describe this image as either blonde or blond If you want to follow the traditional spelling convention, use blonde for girls and women, and blond for boys and men. Blond and blonde are two spellings of the same word.
