The general public has yet to see the new Netflix movie Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, but the movie has already become a controversial topic of conversation. When the movie arrives, it will be the first Netflix movie rated NC-17 and while de Armas says she believes it was important for the movie to go to “uncomfortable places,” she’s still surprised that the rating is so strong.
We’ve seen little from Blonde beyond a couple of trailers, which don’t show anything close to what would earn a movie an NC-17 rating. And one would fully expect a biopic about the life of Marilyn Monroe to include strong sexual content. The late actress's sexuality was a big part of her fame, regardless of how much that was wanted by Monroe herself. The rating and the trailers imply the movie may be going to some dark places. Ana de Armas tells L’Officiel USA that it was important for the film to go there and that she wasn’t the only one in the cast that had to do so. De Armas says…
I didn’t understand why that happened. I can tell you a number of shows or movies that are way more explicit with a lot more sexual content than Blonde. But to tell this story it is important to show all these moments in Marilyn’s life that made her end up the way that she did. It needed to be explained. Everyone [in the cast] knew we had to go to uncomfortable places. I wasn’t the only one.
While Ana de Armas might not feel that the NC-17 rating is warranted, director Andrew Dominik has had a somewhat different approach. While he did initially say he was shocked to learn of Blonde’s rating, since then Dominik has seemed to embrace the NC-17.
He seems to feel that an NC-17 movie is the best way to tell the story in Blonde. We do know from comments the director has made that Marilyn Monroe’s childhood trauma, and the way that trauma manifests in her as an adult, is a big part of the story being told. The official MPAA description of Blonde only notes the film will have “sexual situations” which is awfully vague and the same description we’d expect from an R-rated version of the same movie.
It won’t be long before we learn exactly what earned Blonde such a rating. The movie will be making its debut next week and the Venice International Film Festival, before getting a limited theatrical release. It’s set to hit Netflix on September 28, so within a month the movie will be available to all. How the Netflix audience will embrace an NC-17 movie will be interesting to see. If Blonde does well we could be seeing more movies like it.
