Film Reviews

My Week With Marilyn

• Rating:
• Director: Simon Curtis
• Starring: Eddie Redmayne
• Details: UK/US / 99mins (15A).

An innocent romance involving a sex bomb? Hmmm. That was always hard to pull off but Simon Curtis' movie manages - just about - to do it. The story, based on true events, was never going to be the real selling point – that belongs to the performances and they come through on their promise.
The terribly posh Colin (Redmayne, known from his other terribly posh roles in Glorious 39 and The Other Boleyn Girl) dreams of being involved in the movie business and blags a job as third assistant director on Laurence Olivier's (Branagh) 1957 comedy The Prince And The Showgirl, starring Hollywood starlet Marilyn Monroe (Williams). Colin immediately falls in love with Monroe, but her director and crew aren't terribly enamoured: she's regularly late on set, forgets her lines and Olivier can't understand the Method technique she insists on using. Colin sees through all this to an insecure girl, and when husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) leaves for New York, a little romance blossoms...
Williams shows again what a mesmeric actress she can be. Her Marilyn is a little bit of everything - an innocent child, a smouldering sex symbol, a little bit dense but always aware of the effect she has on people. At one point, when fans swarm around her, she wonders if she should give them what she wants and whispers to Colin, "Shall I be her?" Later, when it's pointed out to Olivier that when Monroe (finally) gets it right, you can't see anyone else. The same goes for Williams here. She and Branagh might be doing impressions but the impressions are top class, with mannerisms and tics down pat. My Week With Marilyn also taps into what a thrill it must have been to spend a week with the most beautiful, sexy and famous woman in the world and Redmayne keeps a difficult balancing act of keeping his head on straight while being totally enthralled with the actress.
Curtis can't find anything for his support cast to do, though. Judi Dench is an absolute darling but she is sadly little surplus to requirements, as is Emma Watson's wardrobe girl whom Colin flirts with for a bit before his head is turned by the platinum blonde. Dominic Cooper, playing executive producer, and Monroe's former lover, Milton Greene, hangs about until the story finds something for him to do, which isn't much, while Toby Jones could have been a lot of fun until the film forgets all about him twenty minutes in. Ditto Julia Ormond as a jealous Vivien Leigh, Olivier's wife, an interesting plot development that is raised but then left unexplored. Zoe Wannamaker comes off best as Monroe's acting coach Paula Strasberg. Some of the dialogue, far too obvious for its own good, can let the side down from time to time.
A snappy pace set to a bubbly jazz soundtrack, My Week With Marilyn isn't the romance story you'd expect but it's easy to lose oneself in the story and those performances.

Review by Gavin Burke