Movie review: Michelle Williams makes a marvelous Marilyn Monroe

My Week With Marilyn (B+)

Doubters of Michelle Williams acting talent will be silenced after they watch her Oscar-worthy performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn. Silenced as in, Super Glue on the lips.

If the Oscar folks dont nominate Williams for an Academy Award, they quite simply are idiots.

You can seee the trailer here.

Williams not only looks like Monroe, talks like Monroe and sings like Monroe, she is Monroe. She inhabits all of Monroes vulnerability, all her insecurity and all her sex appeal. She doesnt just get under Monroes alabaster skin, she finds her conflicted soul. We see an actress flaunting her sexuality yet wanting to be appreciated as a serious actress. In one of the films telling scenes, a James Joyce novel is at her bedside.

Anyone wondering why Monroe became such a legendary -- and analyzed -- figure needs to only see this film. In the high-maintenance department, she makes todays divas look like bag ladies. And her troubled family background gives her more issues than sand pebbles on a beach. Was her fragility even more alluring than her beauty? Did the men who married her not only want to love her but protect her, becoming a husband and a father rolled into one? You dont have to be a Freudian to ponder those questions.

The film is based on two memoirs by Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a product of the British aristocracy who decided he wanted to work on a movie set in the mid-1950s. The film the 23-year-old gets assigned to is The Sleeping Prince. Starring Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Monroe, the film will later be renamed The Prince and The Showgirl.

My Week with Marilyn follows Clark on a journey out of a Hollywood script. He begins working as a glorified go-fer and ends up serving as a confidante for Monroe, who has arrived in England with her newly minted husband, playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott).

The film sho! ws Olivi er getting more and more exasperated by Monroe as hes directing The Sleeping Prince as well. Monroe arrives on the set late and when she does arrive she forgets her lines. Her Method approach to acting also annoys Olivier.

Desperate to finish the film, Olivier has Clark serve as a crisis counselor of sorts to get Monroe on the set. With Miller back in New York, Clark also acts as a personal crutch for Monroe, who clearly enjoys the young mans company and attention.

As filming ends, Olivier starts to appreciate Monroe, realizing that while he may have been a natural on the stage, she is a natural on film.

Now if only the execution of My Week with Marilyn were on a par with Williams performance. Simon Curtis, making his feature film directorial debut, puts all the elements in place for a biographical drama and then does little with them. Miller comes and goes. Oliviers wife, Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond), comes and goes. Clarks love interest, Lucy (Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame), comes and goes. All have their moments but theyre all fleeting. They act as skimming stones to Williams depth charge. We get the biography from screenwriter Adrian Hodges, but little of the drama.

Redmayne fares better as the stars-in-his-eyes movie newbie whose privileged background contrasts strikingly with Monroes. Their scenes together away from the film set provide the film with its best moments, as one would expect from the title. Cynics may wonder if Clark embellished some of the romantic flourishes of their close encounters.

Branagh captures Oliviers own insecurity the British acting legends fame was eclipsed by an actress with a resume that includes pinup girl.

While My Week with Marilyn has its shortcomings, they are not grievous enough to detract from Williams spot-on portrayal of Monroe. The film should be seen for that reason alone. Watch a candle in the wind become a klieg light in the sky.