Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for Blonde, starring Ana da Armas as Marilyn Monroe and being the rare movie to receive an NC-17 rating. The teaser shows little, offering a black-and-white glimpse of Monroe in her dressing room leading up to an event. Armas vacillates between fragility and confidence, or at least the air of confidence, and it’s already clear that this movie is hoping to take home some Academy Awards.
The movie is not going for historical accuracy, instead based on the fiction novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, which reimagines the life of Monroe. As writer and director Andrew Dominik explains, the movie will examine the relationship between the Marilyn Monroe persona and the actual woman underneath, whose name was Norma Jeane Mortenson. Ana de Armas said she studied “hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings, films — anything I could get my hands on. Every scene is inspired by an existing photograph. We’d pore over every detail in the photo and debate what was happening in it.”
Rather than go for cheap shocks, the NC-17 rating is intended to help Blonde more fully express the dimensionality of Marilyn Monroe. It will examine the “human cost of the Hollywood system, the power, and perils of female sexuality, the lifelong impact of childhood trauma.” We will find out if the movie succeeds at these things when Blonde arrives on Netflix on September 23, 2022.
Also, if you clicked on this article because you’re extremely thirsty, you should probably just go watch the Keanu Reeves movie Knock Knock.
