"Ana de Armas is the best actress I've ever worked with," says Blonde director

February 16, 2022

"Ana de Armas is the best actress I've ever worked with," Andrew Dominik, director of the film Blonde, expressed to the newspaper El Mundo, where the Cuban actress plays the cinematographic icon Marilyn Monroe.

"She is capable of anything, and the effort she has made to reproduce Monroe's accent, despite English not being her native language, is incredible," confesses the director during his stay at the Berlin Film Festival to present another film, but he doesn't miss the opportunity to talk about the Cuban actress's performance.

"It's going to be the best movie you've ever seen," Dominik previews, regarding the adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel about Marilyn Monroe.

The film, which has taken him more than six years to bring to light, is merciless with "American sacred cows" and he adds that he is very aware of the MeToo movement. "Marilyn was literally massacred by Hollywood's meat grinder." And having said that, he doesn't hesitate to state loudly and clearly, despite the evident risk of being misunderstood, that "Ana de Armas is the most desirable woman on the planet."

The film has been at the center of debate due to complex scenes and then the adults-only rating it received, for which Netflix as the film's producer tried to be blamed. "All of that is false. On the contrary, if it hadn't been for the platform, it wouldn't have been made. Nobody wanted to participate," the director recalls.

"Anything you can see in series like Euphoria or The Deuce is much more explicit in relation to sex. What's the point of censoring anything in a society where the song of the year is about 'wet pussies'? It's a lie, as I've read out there, that you see bloody cunnilingus with the actress's menstruation. But yes, the film shows what it has to show. Marilyn was raped, or so the story goes. Honestly, I think everything that has happened is because it's about Marilyn, who is an American icon. It's a political problem. With any other character we wouldn't be talking about anything," he clarifies.

For her part, Joyce Carol Oates, the author of the book on which the film is based, was effusive in her praise of the adaptation in early September and didn't even mention the sensitive content: "An exquisite portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Ana de Armas and director Andrew Dominik, one without the other perhaps couldn't have worked this magic. The tone of the film is difficult to classify, not surreal but not entirely realistic, not 'horror' but permeated with the terror of horror," commented the writer in a previous interview.