My Week with Marilyn
Winter 2012 Features series
Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 4:00pm
Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 7:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Simon Curtis
Screenplay by Adrian Hodges and Colin Clark
Based on the book by Colin Clark
Starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, and Kenneth Branagh
Rated 14A ·
1h 39m
United Kingdom / United States
English
My Week with Marilyn
Few celebrities have been able to rival the allure and magnetism of Hollywood’s most tragic and enduring icon, Marilyn Monroe. With My Week with Marilyn, director Simon Curtis offers a fascinating dramatized glimpse during Marilyn Monroe’s time shooting one of Hollywood’s most challenging film productions, The Prince and the Showgirl. Based on Colin Clark’s memoir The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me, the film recounts the young man’s experiences as an assistant to director Lawrence Olivier, as well as the personal relationship he shared with the fragile screen icon.
The youngest in an upper-class family of intellectuals, Colin (Eddie Redmayne, The Other Boleyn Girl) dreams of a career in motion pictures. Landing a job on the highly-publicized film production The Prince and the Showgirl, Colin finds himself the third assistant to director Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh, The Boat That Rocked) and confidant to troubled screen siren Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams, Take This Waltz, Blue Valentine). The production is riddled with tension from the start. Olivier, a classically trained stage actor, shows little patience for Monroe’s chronic tardiness, her nervous jitters and infuriating devotion to method acting. Anxious to be taken seriously, Monroe latches on to Colin for guidance and reassurance, and despite repeated warnings, the young man falls under her spell, bewitched as much by the sad, lost girl as by the dream goddess.
Williams is luminous as the dazzling screen star, and offers a layered performance that goes beyond impersonation. Playing both the damaged, insecure woman and the sensual celebrity construct, Williams offers a rare intimacy with one of Hollywood’s most infamous personalities. According to Peter Travers in Rolling Stone: “The luminous Michelle Williams goes bone-deep here. Monroe’s beauty was one of a kind. No one, not even Williams, can act it. What Williams does, with fierce artistry and feeling, is illuminate Monroe’s insights and insecurities about herself at the height of her fame.”