My Week With Marilyn

last updated 8 January 2015

Directed by Simon Curtis

(R)

“If My Week With Marilyn seems like a slight film, a barely disguised awards vehicle” for star Michelle Williams, “that’s probably because it is,” said Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic. But Williams’s portrayal of the midcareer Marilyn Monroe is “so engaging and complete” that it makes up for the movie’s shortcomings. The story is based on two disputed memoirs by Colin Clark, who claimed to have forged a brief but intense friendship with Monroe while serving as the third assistant director on one of her films. That source material creates major problems, said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. While better books portray Monroe as the complex woman she was, Clark peddled in Marilyn stereotypes: “child, woman, smiling exhibitionist, shrieking neurotic,” and “martyr teetering in heels toward her doom.” Even so, Williams’s portrayal “makes the star come alive,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. While she’s not as voluptuous as Monroe, Williams has the “walk, the easy, swiveling neck,” and, most importantly, “the sexual sweetness and the hurt, lost look that shifts, in a flash, into resistance and tears.”