Review: "My Week With Marilyn" Showcases Two Captivating Women in One Star-Making Performance

Before I get to discussing My Week With Marilyn as an engaged-yet-impartial critic, I have a few words I'd like to say to Michelle Williams.

Dear Michelle,

Hey there. Thanks for reading my review, first of all - but let's skip the chit-chat.

Michelle, you're causing me problems. Because your performance in My Week With Marilyn is beyond my ability to capture in words or wildly gesticulating hands. It's not just the ease with which you completely became Marilyn Monroe in all her breathy, messy, ethereal glory - which is a tremendous feat on its own. No, it's much more than that. You made me understand how it feels to be in the presence of something too beautiful and too fragile to grasp. Your performance left me stunned, and amazed, and incapable of speech. It was simply one of the most astonishingly beautiful performances that I have ever seen.

I also think you may have knocked a few points off my Kinsey rating, but that's a story for another time. At any rate, thank you. You reminded me why I love going to the movies.

Now. Where was I?

Eddie Redmayne

Ah, yes - My Week With Marilyn tells the true (if you believe most memoirs to be entirely accurate) story of Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a young man who through his fortunate connections to Sir Laurence Olivier and his own tenacity secures a job as a gopher on the set of the 1957 romp The Prince and the Showgirl.

When the film's star - Hollywood bombshell Marilyn Monroe - arrives in London with a Strasberg acting coach and new husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott) in tow, it immediately becomes clear that she is looking to establish herself as a "serious" actress. Unfortunately this doesn't sit well with co-star and director Olivier (Kenneth Branagh), who just wants the girl to be sexy and hit her marks.

Feeling overwhelmed by the project, Monroe withdraws, and is alternately doped up by her manager, Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper, as a sneering, dapper Yank), and manhandled by her acting coach, losing favor with Olivier and the crew with every missed call and confused on-camera gaffe.

Michelle Williams and Dougray Scott

Like most men of the time, Colin has fallen madly in love with Ms. Monroe - so when she turns to him as a confidant, he is more than happy to oblige (and since he's actually getting her to report to the set, Olivier looks the other way). As Colin's relationship with Monroe grows closer and more complicated, his tentative romance with costume girl Lucy (Emma Watson) begins to sour, and Marilyn's behavior becomes more more erratic.