It is gorgeously shot and impeccably acted, and yet, Blonde is one the most frustrating movies you will ever watch. Actually, frustrating is putting it mildly. This truly is exploitative garbage masquerading as an epic character study. Without question, Ana De Armas becomes Marilyn Monroe in a career-best performance. Also, without question, her performance deserved infinitely better than to be wasted on this mess. There are tremendous sequences of visual wonder, but they are few and far between a lot of pretentious hogwash. There may be a point to expose the myth of the glamour surrounding Monroe, but this film's head is so far up its own ass, it makes that mission seem pointless. Monroe is portrayed here as a helpless victim. A woman of no agency, completely dependent on a wide-variety of abusive boyfriends and husbands who poorly fill the void of the absentee father she never met. It's scene after scene of this, and it gets old real quickly. Plus, she is haunted by the fetuses of her unborn children.. yeah, there's that too.
