{"id":886768,"date":"2026-09-07T13:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T13:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/886768\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T13:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T13:28:12","slug":"flesh-impact-review-maggie-gyllenhaal-salutes-marilyn-monroe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/886768\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Flesh Impact’ Review: Maggie Gyllenhaal Salutes Marilyn Monroe"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a notable year for short films at the Venice Film Festival, with Saoirse Ronan making her directorial debut (\u201cPaper Plane\u201d), Laura Poitras looking at the ICE occupation of Minneapolis (\u201cThey\u2019re Here\u201d) and Nathan Silver chronicling a life change through the songs of birds (\u201cSounds From Home\u201d), among others.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re looking for star power and cinematic oomph, \u201cFlesh Impact\u201d is the biggest short to come out of Venice since Wes Anderson\u2019s Oscar-winning \u201cThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar\u201d premiered on the Lido in 2023. The 21-minute film was directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who\u2019s serving as president of the Venice jury this year; it will make its debut before the Golden Lion Award ceremony to honor Ellen Burstyn, who stars in the film with Dakota Fanning; and it also features Peter Sarsgaard and newly-minted Emmy nominee Sepideh Moafi from \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, oh yeah, it\u2019s about Marilyn Monroe, who was born 100 years ago this year.<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps, it\u2019s about the world that created, idolized and wrecked Marilyn Monroe, and the industry that simultaneously adored and exploited her. And about the women who followed her and got their own taste of the adoration and exploitation, definitely including Gyllenhaal herself.<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Maggie\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

As a director, she is something of a provocateur, jumping through time to present two sides of a troubled and troubling woman in the quietly unnerving \u201cThe Lost Daughter\u201d and then going a little nuts with this year\u2019s grungy horror riff \u201cThe Bride!\u201d \u201cFlesh Impact\u201d gives Gyllenhaal another complex heroine to consider, but the film itself is gentler, imbued with more sorrow than anger. <\/p>\n

In many ways it\u2019s a lovely reverie delivered by a ghost, but it also has bite. And it ends by serenading Marilyn Monroe with the snarling voice of punk icon Patti Smith, a master stroke that is simultaneously surprising, defiant and wonderfully appropriate.<\/p>\n

The short, which is screening out of competition in Venice, is also a marvelous showcase for Burstyn, who at the age of 93 plays Marilyn \u2013 or Norma, as she first introduces herself \u2013 as a woman who has never forgotten that she had to walk around the studio lot in a negligee before she could get any job offers.<\/p>\n

The film picks her up as she walks in a stage door, strolls onto a stage and announces that she\u2019s there to audition for the role of socialite Carol Cutrere in Tennessee Williams\u2019 1957 play \u201cOrpheus Descending.\u201d She\u2019s an hour late, but the casting director (Moafi) points out that\u2019s not the only problem: \u201cCarol is 25 and beautiful,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m aware,\u201d Marilyn says simply, and then adds that she turned 100 in June. (Monroe was born on June 1, 1926.)<\/p>\n

As the casting director and an unnamed director played by Sarsgaard watch with increasing interest, Marilyn begins to ramble, her wandering monologue covering territory familiar to Monroe aficionados: her marriage to Arthur Miller, the orphanage where she spent time as a child, the lure of the nearby film studio, her studies with Lee Strasberg, her mistreatment and dismissal at the hands of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilly Wilder said I had flesh impact,\u201d she says, and then defines the term: \u201cYou could reach out and touch me.\u201d A pause. \u201cAnd everybody did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ink\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\"FleshDakota Johnson in \u201cFlesh Impact\u201d (Courtesy of Venice Film Festival)<\/p>\n

Between lines from \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire\u201d and a riveting monologue from \u201cOrpheus Descending,\u201d she calmly sketches her career in a town where she said the prevailing attitude was that actresses were \u201call whores.\u201d Burstyn makes the hurt palpable but also shows the layers that were erected to hide the pain \u2013 and as a 100-year-old legend dropped into a theater that seems unmoored in time, she doesn\u2019t need to point out that much of what she says can also apply to current-day Hollywood.<\/p>\n

The film has a leisurely pace that\u2019s always rooted in sorrow. As Marilyn circles through Hollywood injustices both small and large, Gyllenhaal deploys flashbacks that eventually find Burstyn\u2019s Marilyn morphing into Johnson\u2019s Marilyn and vice versa.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not revelatory, but it\u2019s not meant to be; it\u2019s an offhand, restrained meditation on fame and femininity from a woman who has been battered and bruised but knows her power. \u201cI can still manage it, sometimes,\u201d she says. \u201cFlesh impact.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

The film is partly a commercial, commissioned by the automotive brand Genesis and featuring one of their electric vehicles in the opening scene. But Gyllenhaal turns product placement into a wry punchline of sorts, another example of the finesse with which she handles the material.<\/p>\n

The movie is timed to Monroe\u2019s centennial, but its filmmaker isn\u2019t one for uncomplicated celebration. \u201cFlesh Impact\u201d is sweet and funny with an edge, convincing us that even blonde screen goddesses contain an inner Patti Smith ready to roar.<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"practical-magic-2-sandra-bullock-nicole-kidman\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a notable year for short films at the Venice Film Festival, with Saoirse Ronan making her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,307656,80850,121394,16269,337,4186],"class_list":["post-886768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-flesh-impact","tag-maggie-gyllenhaal","tag-marilyn-monroe","tag-movie-review","tag-movies","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}