‘Blonde’ reviews: Critics drool over Ana de Armas, ‘uncanny’ as Marilyn Monroe

nypost.com:

Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde” starring Ana de Armas premiered at the Venice Film Festival Thursday, earning praise from several critics for its portrayal of the 1950s blonde bombshell.

Adapted from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, the film runs nearly three hours and received a 14-minute standing ovation from the crowd, which caused de Armas to break down into tears, according to Variety.“Andrew Dominik’s Venice Film Festival competition entry ‘Blonde’ takes a blowtorch to the entire concept of the Hollywood biopic and arrives at something almost without precedent,” Deadline’s critic said.“[‘Blonde’] is simply inventing fresh indignities for the most positively, permanently persecuted heroine outside of a John Waters movie ever to have to suffer.” As Netflix’s first film with an NC-17 rating, “Blonde” sparked backlash almost instantly when it debuted its first trailer in July over the casting of de Armas due to the fact that she is Cuban and her accent was not “authentic.”Variety’s critic Owen Gleiberman disagreed in his review, saying the film is “built around a performance, by Ana de Armas, of breathtaking shimmer and imagination and candor and heartbreak.

It’s a luscious piece of acting with a raw scream tucked inside.”“No actress alive is going to look just like Monroe (de Armas’ eyes are a dead ringer; her smile is a tad less ripe and more knowing), but with Marilyn the voice is everything — that’s where her personality lives — and de Armas nails it to an uncanny degree,” he added.“In ‘Blonde,’ she gives us nothing less than what we came for.

She becomes Marilyn Monroe.”Despite the high praise, some reviewers found that “Blonde” deprives Monroe of her own urgency.“This is a portrait of Monroe that.