Netflix’s Blonde Trailer: Fans Are Falling in Love With Sultry Ana de Armas in Raunchy Marilyn Monroe Biopic
Netflix has released the first look of Blonde written and directed by Andrew Dominik, based on the fictional novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe. The film is a re-imagining of the Hollywood icon’s professional and personal life.
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Blonde: The dichotomy of Marilyn’s public and private self
The fictional account will follow Monroe through her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane towards her rise to stardom and her romantic entanglements. A deliberate blurring between fact and fiction is employed to bring to the fore the dichotomy of her public and private self.
The one-minute teaser is a montage of a few of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic moments in the spotlight while a chilly tune of Monroe’s hit Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend plays in the background. In under a minute, the teaser shows the woman Marilyn feeling dissociated from the Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe, the overwhelming media attention and the loneliness of being a celebrity.
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but who can Marilyn Monroe turn to? The haunting teaser trailer for Andrew Dominik’s highly-anticipated “Blonde,” starring Ana de Armas as an anguished Monroe, announced a September 23 release date on Netflix. See here: https://t.co/4qlPyP5ecg pic.twitter.com/Y9zbdtaXky
— IndieWire (@IndieWire) June 16, 2022
Explore the Trauma and psyche of the woman that was Marilyn
In an interview for Netflix’s Queue, de Armas says that Dominik’s ambitions for the film were “very clear from the start — to present a version of Marilyn Monroe’s life through her lens… He wanted the world to experience what it actually felt like to not only be Marilyn, but also Norma Jeane… I found that to be the most daring, unapologetic and feminist take on her story that I had ever seen.”
The Writer-Director Dominic says that it is the exploration of a persona that was so “deeply traumatized,” that it resulted in a split between her public self and a private self, which for “a famous person, that often plays out publicly, in ways that may cause additional trauma.” As a result, “the film’s very much concerned with the relationship with herself and with this other persona, Marilyn, which is both her armour and the thing that is threatening to consume her.”
De Armas recalled her schedule during the 47-day shoot. She shared how she read Joyce’s novel while she had to spend multiple hours in the hair and make-up chair, and also studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings and films. The result is a movie that is “not linear or conventional; it is meant to be a sensorial and emotional experience.”
She further said, “There are moments when we are inside of her body and mind, and this will give the audience an opportunity to experience what it was like to be Norma and Marilyn at the same time.”
A rare adult rating for Blonde
The director shared his views on the NC-17 rating that the movie got. “I seem to get myself in these situations where people regard me as provocative, but it’s never what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to say it as clearly as I can. My ambition is to make you fall in love with Marilyn.”
The movie is among the streamer’s first produced titles to garner the rare rating from the Motion Picture Association, although it is not the first NC-17 title to stream on Netflix.
Apart from Ana de Armas, the movie has a star cast comprising Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Evan Williams, Julianne Nicholson, Xavier Samuel, Scoot McNairy, Garret Dillahunt and Lucy Devito. Blonde is produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Tracey Landon and Scott Robertson, with Christina Oh serving as executive producer.
Watch the teaser here:
The film is set to release on Netflix on 23rd September 2022.
