Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn show the word a… different transformation into Marylin Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe remains one of cinema’s most instantly recognisable figures. Decades after her death, people who have never watched a single one of her films still know the platinum waves, the beauty mark, the breathy voice, the dazzling smile which could light up a room. That extraordinary cultural afterlife has produced endless tributes, biopics, documentaries, and reimagining’s. Too often, however, they circle the same familiar ground: the glittering surface, the private torment, the myth of the tragic blonde. This leaves fans wanting something different
Filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 17-minute short film ‘Flesh Impact’ does not retell the familiar arc of Marilyn Monroe’s life. Instead, it asks a question: what if Marilyn Monroe had lived another six decades? What if the woman who felt trapped by the image had been granted the time, the space, and the freedom to keep working, changing, and becoming?
The short opens with a mysterious older woman auditioning for a part at a small New York black-box theatre. Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi play the theatre staff who conduct the audition, asking about her experience and gradually drawing out details of a life that’s both recognisable and newly imagined. Through their questions and her answers, the film gently reveals how thoroughly the public came to misunderstand Monroe’s true self. In reality, her carefully crafted performances were commonly overshadowed by constant media focus on her private struggles, her marriages, and her image. Flesh Impact treats that misunderstanding not as gossip but as a loss, of complexity, of agency, of the possibility of a longer artistic life.
So Dakota Johnson will act as Marilyn Monroe during the height of her fame, and then 93-year-old Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn will continue the story with a fictional older version of Monroe.
The festival will also present Ellen Burstyn with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, creating what is expected to be a very special event.
Johnson appears almost unrecognisable as the star at the height of her fame: a short blonde wig, the carefully placed beauty mark, the luminous black-and-white close-ups that portray both the surface glamour and something more elusive beneath it. Gyllenhaal has been clear that the casting was never about choosing someone who looked exactly like Monroe. The point, she has said, is that the public never truly knew what the real Marilyn looked or acted like once her image had fixed into a symbol. Johnson’s casting allows that gap to be explored rather than trying to repeat the same old stories.
In a crowded field of Monroe media, most projects still show “This is what she was.” Gyllenhaal’s short asks something different: “What might she have become?”
Showing fans the woman who might still have been working, auditioning, surprising people (even at ninety-three)
The project is set to debut at the Venice Film Festival in September.
