It may have garnered a 14 minute standing ovation when it premiered at Venice Film Festival but Netflix's Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, has divided critics.
The film 'boldly reimagines' the life of the Hollywood icon, from her difficult childhood as Norma Jeane, to her enormous fame as a film star and sex symbol. It's not an easy watch: Marilyn is exploited, brutalised and abused by those around her, throughout the film.
There are graphic scenes of sexual assault - including a scene where she is coerced into a sex act by President John F Kennedy - and a vaginal point-of-view camera shot as she has a pregnancy terminated. At one point, a CGI sequence of her unborn foetus begs to stay alive.
This has prompted some critics to call Blonde 'an exercise in exploitation', others have described it as 'fantasy rape porn'. Some have accused the film of being anti-abortion, a claim which Blonde director Andrew Dominik rebuked in an interview with The Wrap.
'[There is a] desire to look at ‘Blonde’ through this Roe v. Wade lens,' Dominik said, in response to critics of the film. 'They’ve got a certain agenda where they feel like the freedoms of women are being compromised, and they look at ‘Blonde’ and they see a demon, but it’s not really about that.' He added: 'I don’t think the movie is anti-pro choice. I don’t think it is at all.'
Ana de Armas has also defended Blonde. Speaking to Empire she explained, 'It’s a film that is supposed to create controversy and discomfort.' She goes on to say: 'Whether we were shooting an abortion scene, dealing with abuse, nudity, happy sex, unhappy sex, it is so important to show the reality of it.'
How accurate is Netflix's Blonde?
Blonde is categorically not a biopic, but an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, which is a work of biographical fiction. Netflix's promotional material makes clear that 'Blonde blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between [Marilyn's] public and private selves'.
As for the accuracy of Blonde's most controversial scenes, there's no evidence that Marilyn had an abortion, however she did suffer three miscarriages during her marriage to playwright, Arthur Miller. And while there are many conflicting accounts regarding the nature of Marilyn Monroe and JFK's relationship, there is no record of JFK having ever sexually assaulting her, either.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Joyce Carol Oates said, 'It’s not a feel-good movie. Many films about Marilyn Monroe are kind of upbeat and have a lot of music and singing. She’s very beautiful and sweet. This one is probably closer to what she actually experienced.'
Blonde is streaming on Netflix now