Ana de Armas fully commits to a career-defining role and deeply inhabits the character in a way that few actors do.

The challenge and this is part of what the film tries to explore, is that this character - both Norma Jeane and Marilyn - is a cipher.

The problem is that this cipher inhabits a script that itself is a void, it's empty.

So it's Matryoshka dolls all the way down.

The film thinks it has some big ideas and points to land about fame and the duality inherent to celebrity: the person you really are vs. the person other people perceive and demand you to be. And how this is even more difficult if you don't yourself know who you are, or where you come from or...who your father even is.

This is a rich vein to mine and in the hands of more skilled writers - perhaps even Joyce Carol Oates, upon whose novel (which I haven't read) the film is based - it might've resulted in something profound, even moving.

Instead, it's dull, repetitive, overlong, and, most damning, superficial.

It ends up being the story of a girl with daddy issues that she never overcomes. Sure, it's a fictional version of a real person's life (which biopic isn't ?), and this is something that a lot of people seem to be taking exception with. But that's not the problem. The problem is that it just doesn't have anything interesting to say about what could've been - should've been - a fascinating story.

It's flawed narrative (to the extent that there even is one) is glossed over by filmmaking techniques such as switching between black and white and various types of color, simulated film grains, changing aspect ratios, cameras mounted on actors, POV shots that are out of focus when the character whose eyes we're seeing through has their glasses off, dolly shots, Steadicam shots, shaky handheld shots, crane shots (no drones were harmed in the making of this film), CGI that replaces Marilyn with Ana playing Norma Jeane playing Marilyn in some of her most iconic sequences. In isolation, there is virtuosity to the way these techniques are executed, but their sheer number and combination overwhelm to the point of gimmickry.

If you're resorting to the use of missiles and guns as visual metaphors for the male member while there's sex also taking place on (ok, just off) screen, you've got a lot to answer for. 

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Narain