My Week With Marilyn
Starring: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Watson
Director: Simon Curtis
Rating: 4.5/5
You know that Oscar season is just around the corner as the biopics start to appear on the big screen - they are always a big hit with the Academy.
Michelle Williams picked up a Best Actress nomination earlier this year for her performance in Blue Valentine and she could well make it two in a row with a stunning performance as the icon Marilyn Monroe.
In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’, the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.
Nearly 40 years on, his diary account ‘The Prince, the Showgirl and Me’ was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as ‘My Week with Marilyn’ - this is the story of that week.
When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
Williams is one of the more understated actresses in Hollywood but she has really nailed her colours to the mast this year with another stunning performance.
She totally embodies Monroe from the opening scene to the rolling credits and shows the conflict between the woman the world adored and the troubled soul behind closed doors.
It is a very moving performance from Williams as she shows Monroe's daily struggle with being the most famous woman in the world and her desperate need to find someone that loves her.
She is supported by a fabulous cast as Eddie Redmayne, who plays Colin, really steps into his own with this movie as the caring and concerned third assistant on whom Monroe leans.
And Kenneth Branagh is superb as the exacerbated Laurence Olivier who struggles to direct Monroe in The Prince and the Showgirl.
There are some interesting moments between in Branagh and Redmayne as Olivier is portrayed as a man still trying to hold onto youth and discover where is place now is in an industry that he once dominated.
Emma Watson, Judi Dench & Dominic Cooper appear throughout the film and it would have been nice to see more of all of them - especially Dench.
Curtis has shot a really beautiful movie that captures that heart and the essence of a by gone era - there is a certain amount of magic in this film as we see some of the greatest stars brought to life on the big screen.
However the pace of the movie is a little pedestrian, but really is the film's only fault.
This is an enchanting movie that takes you into the past and brings you face to face with one of cinema's biggest icons - telling a truly heartbreaking tale along the way.
Williams is simply superb in the lead role and don't be surprised if we see her featuring heavily come the awards season.
My Week With Marilyn is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw