Review: My Week With Marilyn

Disney starlet Miley Cyrus, stung by anonymous online comments saying she'd gained weight, responded by posting a picture of Marilyn Monroe on her Twitter account with the caption: 'Proof that you can be adored by thousands of men even when your thighs touch.'

Putting aside doubts that 19-year-old Miley's thighs are approaching anything like Monroe's proportions (plus the pointlessness of responding to vile Twitter trolls wanting a public rise out of a celebrity, and the possible suggestion that male admiration is the only goal) it's not hard to see why she chose the image.

Watching My Week With Marilyn a few days ago, I tried to call up my prior knowledge of the subject. I took part in a production of Some Like It Hot at university, but I didn't play Monroe's part. I played Generic Bimbo No 3, and frolicked round the stage in a nightie with my boobs hoiked up to my chin. Not very insightful, or warm.

The sum of what I know is a caricatured image, a blonde poster icon with red lips and a clinging swimsuit, singing breathily. A Warhol picture. An idea held up far and wide, all waist and breasts and pout and leg, plus some sort of tragic ending involving pills and possibly a Kennedy.

And more than that, as Miley Cyrus demonstrated, some generously-hipped notion of womanhood to counter boyish modern ideals. But a siren, too? Or proof that a nice rack and a little girl lost act will get you everywhere? At once for the girls and against them. These are the bits I picked up without being particularly interested in her. Should I be apologetic? I do feel a little like I'm letting the side down, that all women should know Marilyn's life, and idolise her 'real' curves. Curves that have become so magnified and reproduced that over the last few days, I've been told variously (always with awe) that she was actually a dress size 12, 14, 16, didn't I know?

So it was that armed with these slivers of fact-fiction, I settled down to watch My Week With Marilyn. Music, lights, action, there's Michelle Williams with a microphone, and slithering towards the camera. A blonde poster icon, all pout and rack, indeed. And initially, distractingly fake hips. Then, dear reader, I totally fell for it.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), we shouldn't like. A rich boy, all starry-eyed and keen, who uses a mixture of determination and family connections to work on a Laurence Olivier film starring Monroe. His crush on her blossoms until it pushes all else out of the frame, and it is his slightly incredible, but apparently true diary-turned-memoir on screen.

Kenneth Branagh is Olivier, trying desperately to hold the filming of The Prince & The Showgirl together in the face of Monroe's creative timekeeping, fluffed lines, and reliance on medication and an acting coach to deal with her constant insecurities. His unrequited lust for her is an aside that feeds his frustrations.

Artificial hips forgotten, Michelle Williams is brilliant. She is still recognisably the icon Marilyn, yet I wasn't constantly wondering whether she looks right, sounds right. She just is right. And thus, I am still left with the questions - is Monroe a troubled but innocent cash cow for Team Marilyn, devastated to be told that all she can do is "look sexy", hideously desperate for love? Or does she, as Olivier spits in the film, know exactly what she's doing when holding entire film sets to ransom while her constructed family of business partner (Dominic Cooper) and acting coach (Zoe Wanamaker) buy her pills and tell her she's marvellous? (I can see why Lindsay Lohan wishes to appropriate some of this tragic glamour, styling herself as a Monroe for our times, but that's another story. And, er, she isn't.)

My Week With Marilyn hints that her rejection of Olivier had its part to play in the on set difficulties. He, according to the film, had the same reaction to Marilyn as many men around her did. They pursued (successfully or unsuccessfully) and it didn't work out. If, as a cinematographer who worked on the film revealed in 2003, it's true that Olivier referred to her as a "bitch" for years afterwards, one can only speculate which problem sparked such dislike.

It never worked out really, the film seems to say. The men in her life wanted to protect her and make her happy, only to realise they weren't happy themselves to find - as she says - that she isn't Marilyn after all. The persona unravels throughout the story, from when she touches down in England to begin filming - cartoon, coquettish Monroe throwing one liners at the press - to the final scenes. She's vulnerable, insecure and messed up, but always manages to stick her Marilyn face back on eventually. I don't know if it's ridiculous or fitting that those who sign their lives away on Disney's dotted line at the age of 10 compare themselves to her.

As a Monroe newbie, I expect I'm going over old ground here, but it's the first film in ages that has prompted me to care, or to find out more. Emma Watson as Clark's other romantic interest was forgettable, but Dame Judi Dench playing Dame Sybil Thorndike was a scene stealer, Brannagh wonderful, and Williams just shone completely. It's pretty, thoughtful, funny, and sad. The entire thing flicked my switch. I was utterly delighted.

If this film was a person, I'd make moon eyes at it and write 'I heart MWWM' on the cover of my exercise books. As it was, my filmgoing companion and I simply sighed at each other over a glass of wine afterwards. All this said, it's such a shame the trailer makes it look like a chick flick. Yes, it's fun, but it's beautiful. And as an induction to the cult of Marilyn, you can't go far wrong.