Pedro Almodóvar Praises ‘Blonde’ as a “Great Film”

As far were concerned here at WoR, there are only a handful of films being released this year that are very high atop our must-see list.

They are Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” David Fincher’s “The Killer,” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” Steven Spielberg’s “The Fablemans,” Ari Aster’s “Disappointment Blvd” and Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.”

We already know that Thierry Fremaux has seen “Blonde” and really wanted it to be part of the official competition at Cannes. Another person who has seen the film is the novel’s author Joyce Carol Oates who praised the adaptation as “brilliant and very disturbing.”

Now, in a write-up for Spanish media outlet El Diario, Pedro Almodóvar is also praising Dominik’s “Blonde.”

I must be one of the few to have seen “Blonde”, Andrew Dominik's great film, where Ana de Armas plays Marilyn Monroe in a chillingly real way.

There is a sequence (if it does not disappear from the final cut) of the harassment she suffered in the hands of President Kennedy. The sequence is explicit enough to make you feel Marilyn's revulsion and pain.

The film is a novel by great writer Joyce Carol Oates, it tackles Norma Jean Baker more so than Hollywood creation “Marilyn Monroe”. Norma Jean fought all her life for men around the world to understand that Marilyn was the result of her extraordinary work as an actress.

Shortly after, when Norma Jean, already a zombie, was invited to famously whisper-sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” I can only imagine how poor Norma must have felt, in the face of patriotic duty, to sing “happy birthday” to the same man who abused her (as seen in the film) dressed in a skintight dress that became iconic.

“Blonde” is the Marilyn Monroe biopic that was stamped with an NC-17 rating a few months ago. The film comes with a lot of controversy, most of which involves Dominik fighting for final cut with Netflix. The filmmaker ultimately won the battle, despite Netflix hiring an editor to “tighten” the film.