My Week with Marilyn

My Week With Marilyn is an adaptation of Colin Clark's memoir The Prince, the Showgirl and Me. Clark was a production assistant working for Laurence Olivier's production company on the set of the 1957 film, The Prince and the Showgirl. Michelle Williams deftly delivers a breathtaking performance that was a shocking surprise for me since I was convinced only Scarlet Johansson had the real Marilyn hiding inside her. Williams is highly regarded as one the best actresses of her cinematic generation and her Marilyn Monroe confirms that reputation.

As Marilyn, Williams radiates glowing vulnerability, fragile strength and breakthrough sensuality. Constantly surrounded by an entourage of bloodsuckers and support staff, Marilyn appears incapable of operating in life without a caregiver reminding her of her brilliance and importance in the world. In retrospect, that doesn't sound like such a bad gig, but Marilyn Monroe's fragile ego was a bottomless pit of need exhausting and burning out everyone who stood too close to the flame of her stardom.

Every close-up of Williams' Marilyn is lit with elegance, romance and love. Her wardrobe and styling, designed to highlight her figure, coloring and sensuousness succeeds at every angle. I found myself mesmerized by her incandescence, which was, of course, the point. I was so seduced by the film and it's stars, I'm up for another Week With Marilyn.