Netflix will surely get its money’s worth attention-wise thanks in part to its restrictive NC-17 rating, but the film’s merits burn out long before its credits ever roll. It’s not a fresh take or a wrong one, but the tone is so self-conscious and surreal as to blunt those insights. Norma Jeane is eventually transformed into Marilyn Monroe, but even then she consistently speaks of her star persona in the third person, as if the image stands apart and utterly separate from the human being behind it. Still, “Blonde” is almost wholly de Armas’ show, and to the extent it’s worth sitting through at all give her every ounce of credit. Indeed, once you get past admiring de Armas’ immersion into the role, that’s the only itch that “Blonde” seems to know how to scratch.

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