Breathtakingly Brittle

Blonde | Director: Andrew Dominik | Cast: Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody | Language: English | Netflix

“Marilyn is just a career, she doesn’t have any well-being,” says Norma Jeane, breathily, to her agent, who insists that he invented her. “You’re free to invent yourself,” says her friend and lover Charlie Chaplin Jr, “like you gave birth to yourself.” Like Spencer, which was about Princess Diana last year, Blonde is a reimagined piece of fic­tion, based on Joyce Carol Oates’s novel about Marilyn Monroe. The levels of deception and fakery are deep, and Ana de Armas’ transformation goes beyond the obvious blonde wig and the arched body. There is a fragility but also an innate power as she is used and abused, and retains her sanity by distancing the reality of Norma Jeane from the ce­lebrity of Marilyn Monroe. In popular culture, Norma Jeane has always been portrayed as the blonde bombshell, the brittle star, essentially the victim. That she was by all accounts. And as Armas sits naked before her first husband, chances upon the lies of her second husband, and gags after sex with the president, she shows Norma Jeane more debased than she has ever been shown before. But almost no account, on screen and in text, has captured the joie de vivre of Marilyn. Armas’ performance as Norma Jeane is heartbreaking but it is in captur­ing the joy of Marilyn onscreen, her ability to act with her entire body, the smile that stirred a thousand libidos, that she falls short. And that indeed was the triumph of the little girl from nowhere who conquered Hollywood.

Why watch it: For a career defining performance by Ana de Armas.

Rom-Com Formula – Plan A Plan B | Director: Shashanka Ghosh | Cast: Tamannaah Bhatia, Riteish Deshmukh | Language: Hindi | Netflix

Ever since Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan decided to take their foot off the pedal, rom-coms have ceased to be an attractive genre. The only place the genre is kept alive is on Netflix, even if it occasionally has to be put on a ventilator, as in the recent egregious rom-com, Love in the Villa. Those who love the genre, with its clichés—opposites attract, hate turns to love, and, yes, there can be happily ever after—will com­mend Plan A Plan B for its effort. Take a beautiful heroine recover­ing from a mysterious heartbreak, introduce her to a good-looking man who hates her at first sight, and put them in close proximity. Some sharp exchanges follow, a few friends and family members intervene, and soon they’re ready to take their vows. In Plan A Plan B every cliché is lovingly tended to, underlined, lit up in neon, and burnished till it shines brighter than Tamannaah Bhatia’s glossy skin. She’s a matchmaker given to conducting experiments involving sniffing people’s necks and taking tests like schoolchildren. Riteish Deshmukh is a divorce lawyer given to drinking excessively and dancing wildly in his after hours. Obviously she is not as proper as she looks and he is not as stud-like as he seems. What can possibly keep them apart? Directed by Shashanka Ghosh, whose Khoobsurat (2014) made Fawad Khan a national heartthrob before he returned to Pakistan, the movie moves at a rapid pace, covering the usual love-up, break-up, make-up. It could have been wittier, smarter, and sweeter, but a smouldering tango at the end almost saves it from going south.

Why watch it: The camera loves Tamannaah and so do we.

blondeMarilyn MonroeNetflixOTTPlan A Plan B