As the release nears for Blonde, the Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas that has secured the first NC-17 rating in Netflix’s history, director Andrew Dominik is promising that the unflinching film will have something in it to offend everyone. Dominik made the remarks in a new interview with Vulture, where he reflected on how the movie still fits into the larger #MeToo discussion even though it arrived almost half a decade later.
It’s an interesting time for Blonde to come out. If it had come out a few years ago, it would have come out right when Me Too hit and it would have been an expression of all that stuff. We’re in a time now, I think, where people are really uncertain about where any lines are. It’s a film that definitely has a morality about it. But it swims in very ambiguous waters because I don’t think it will be as cut-and-dried as people want to see it. There’s something in it to offend everyone.
Dominik also opened up about Blonde‘s headline-making NC-17 rating. “I thought we’d colored inside the lines,” the director said. “But I think if you’ve got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It’s just a weird time. It’s not like depictions of happy sexuality. It’s depictions of situations that are ambiguous.”
Dominik then said Americans are “strange” when it comes to sex even though the country makes “more porn than anyone else in the world,” which is certainly a take. Not necessarily an incorrect take, but certainly… a take.