LITTLE GIRL LOST (BLONDE)

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Just three months after one Antipodean director examined the exploitation of an American icon, another one has done something similar.

Hot on the heels of Baz Luhrmann's phenomenally successful 'Elvis' - $284 million received at the box office and counting - Andrew Dominik has a new movie that has landed on Netflix after a brief appearance at the Venice Film Festival.

'Elvis' was a vibrant, highly stylised account of how the singer was ruthlessly exploited for financial gain by the entertainment industry - particularly Colonel Tom Parker.

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Andrew Dominick's 'Blonde' is a vibrant, highly stylised account of how Norma Jeane Mortenson (AKA Marilyn Monroe) was ruthlessly sexually and financially exploited by several men, particularly in the Hollywood studio system.

The director's adaptation of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize nominated novel by Joyce Carol Oates is a gruelling experience.

Cuban actress Ana de Armas steps into the role of Marilyn/Norma Jeane as Dominik charts her turbulent early life, her rise to superstardom and her slide into drug addiction and death at the tender age of 36.

de Armas shoulders the bulk of the film but for the first quarter of an hour, Lily Fisher plays the young Norma Jeane as a seven year old, living in LA with her mentally unstable single mother, Julianne Nicholson's Gladys Baker.

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On her daughter's birthday, Gladys shows Norma Jeane a framed photo of the man she claims is her child's father, talking vaguely about how much he loves them but how he has not been able to be with them because he works out of town.

Later that night as a fire breaks out in the Hollywood Hills, a clearly inebriated Gladys grabs Norma Jeane and drives towards the blaze, ignoring the warnings of other motorists.

Stopped by the police, she insists she is taking her daughter to her father's house in the Hollywood Hills which is fireproof but is ordered to turn back and head home.

On the journey back, Gladys flies into a rage when Norma Jeane asks why her dad is living nearby but she has never seen him.

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When they get home Gladys tries to drown her child in the bath, claiming Norma Jeane's existence is the reason why he is not living there.

Managing to climb out of the bathtub, the seven year old bangs on the door of her neighbours' home seeking help.

Gladys is sent to a mental asylum.

Norma Jeane ends up in an orphanage.

Dominik skips to Norma Jeane's emergence as a pin up model, with de Armas taking over the baton from Fisher.

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Given a chance to carve out a career in movies, Norma Jeane is summoned into the office of a studio head to read for a part - only to be raped by him.

Over the course of the next two and a half hours, we see ups but mostly downs in her life.

As her career as Marilyn Monroe starts to ignite, she falls into a ménage a trois with Xavier Samuel's Cass Chaplin and Evan Williams' Eddy Robinson Jr - the disaffected sons of the movie stars Charlie Chaplin and Edward G Robinson.

Fearing tabloid interest in the relationship with Cass and Eddy could sink her career, Dan Butler's oily studio executive I E Shinn warns her to conduct her sex life privately and avoid getting pregnant.

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Inevitably she does get pregnant and while she is initially thrilled, Norma Jeane decides to have an abortion out of fear that the baby could inherit her mum's mental illness.

Dominik's film marks each milestone in her career and turbulent private life - the success of 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,'  'The Seven Year Itch' and 'Some Like It Hot,' her marriages to Bobby Cannavale's baseball icon Joe Di Maggio and Adrien Brody's playwright Arthur Miller, the loss of another baby, her affair with Caspar Phillipson's President John F Kennedy.

As he catalogues each event, the film makes great play of her fixation with her missing daddy - to the extent that she calls a lot of her lovers daddy.

Dominick's feature also explores Norma Jeane's alienation from her celebrity persona.

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The movie is particularly savage about the blanket refusal of most men to take her seriously, to the point where she is reduced to being objectified by many and sexually exploited by a few.

The writer-director wants us to recoil in horror at the treatment of Norma Jean/Marilyn - which we do - by showing in the most graphic detail how she was constantly used and abused.

However this gruelling parade of indignity after indignity is often hard to stomach and it almost obliterates any sense of Norma Jean/Marilyn's intelligence and wit.

His tendency to go for broke with graphic, even invasive imagery - in one scene we get a point of view shot from inside Norma Jeane's vagina as an abortion is about to be performed - is a bit too much.

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The shock tactics in 'Blonde' are so excessive, it feels like you are being screamed at for 165 minutes.

To be fair, there are moments of mesmerising cinematography in the movie from Chayse Irvin who brilliantly lights the black and white imagery that dominates 'Blonde' while making the most of its occasional splashes of colour.

Slickly edited by Adam Robinson, there are undeniably riveting moments in the film, including slow motion scenes of crowds enveloping Marilyn at film premieres which are reminiscent of 'Raging Bull'.

It has to be acknowledged too that Dominik tackles the story with huge commitment and great visual panache.

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de Armas, though, is the best reason to see 'Blonde'.

Like Austen Butler in 'Elvis,' the Cuban actress is given the unenviable task of portraying a pop culture icon we know far too well and who she doesn't physically resemble.

And yet, like Butler, she somehow manages to convince as Norma Jeane - mostly mastering Marilyn's distinctive voice and throwing herself with brio into what is a mentally and physically demanding role.

Carrying the bulk of the film, de Armas deserves a lot of awards season attention.

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She is complemented in the film by some generous turns from Cannavale and Brody and also by Samuel in an eye catching performance as Cass Chaplin.

Cannavale crackles with longing and then rage.

Brody brings tenderness to the part of Miller but also reserve.

Dominik's film, though, is not an easy watch and it is not the sort of movie that will fade quickly from memory.

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The events portrayed are grim and uncomfortable.

Some are fictionalised imaginings of events in the star's life like the rumoured relationship with Cass Chaplin which Dominik balloons considerably.

As a result, those devoted to the screen persona of Marilyn will find the playing with fact and the relentless brutality hard to stomach.

With its evocative score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Dominik has delivered an ambitious, bloated, in your face film.

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In the era of #MeToo, he raises important and disturbing questions about the exploitation of women in the entertainment industry over the years, particularly Hollywood.

'Blonde' will divide opinion though and trigger a debate whether graphic depictions of sexual assault or more subtle explorations like Kitty Green's 'The Assistant' are more effective in their exposure of Hollywood's shameful treatment of women.

Occasionally, though, the film achieves moments of greatness but there are also scenes which will have you questioning if they really needed to be that graphic.

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Some viewers may wonder as they recoil if they are being a little too unwilling to confront the reality of what sexual assault and exploitation means.

Others may argue that Dominik is exploiting Norma Jean's suffering.

Wherever you stand, 'Blonde' is not a film that you will be rushing back to see.

But it is one you will be mulling over for some time to come.

('Blonde' received its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 8, 2022 and was released for streaming on Netflix on September 28, 2022)