English Flicks

(This is a review from several weeks ago that was languishing in draft unpublished status.)
 
No I am not reading as diligently as I vowed.  Movies beckon especially after the intriguing previews included in the Iron Lady DVD.  So a couple of nights ago, I did a double feature of My Week with Marilyn and W/E.  Both were good, if perhaps chick flicks … although what male would be opposed to watching Michelle Williams as Monroe.

MWWM had a great supporting cast, most notably Kenneth Branaugh as Larry Olivier.  I found it difficult to watch “a week in the life of” knowing too well how short that life would be and how much worse than the pains, drugs and loneliness of Marilyn’s time on the set of the Prince and the Showgirl.  How everyone either wanted to glom on to her fame or use her to advance their own.  (See I still am thinking about The Frenzy of Renown even though I am only as far as Plutarch.)

W/E was beautiful but I felt the over-story of the contemporary young woman at Sotheby’s was a bit contrived.  A flashback vehicle in the context of the sale seemed legit, but striving to make too many parallel experiences across the decades between a fan and her idol was stretched too thin, as thin as Wallis herself.  Now, there was a woman of with and backbone as compared to the naïve and malleable MM … the difference between a penultimate flatterer and one being fawned over.

I still have one more British film to go, Anonymous, so expect one more installment of movie reviews before I once again pick up my two bedside books.