My Week with Marilyn ****

"My Week With Marilyn" amuses and instructs as it dramatizes the memoir of a movie-struck young Colin Clark, just out of university, who becomes a gopher and a bit more on the set of his first film, "The Prince and the Showgirl," starring Marilyn Monroe and Sir Lawrence Olivier. Olivier directed this romantic comedy, shot in the late summer of 1956 in England, and the expected clashes between the moody Method actress and the old-school professional were in full flower. From Colin's perspective, it was all wonderful, and his insight into the forces at work was mature beyond his years. "You represent the future to him," he tells Marilyn, "and he represents respectability to you, and neither of you will get what you want from this film."

Colin becomes a trusted confidant, almost a friend, of Marilyn, and he's clearly, deeply infatuated, despite all the warnings from everyone around him. Sometimes it's just commiseration he gets. Watching him on the set, Dame Sybil Thorndike, deliciously played by Judi Dench, observes, "Young love is such sweet despair."

Kenneth Branagh plays the buttoned-up Olivier with relish, and his increasing clenched-jaw frustration with the always late and seldom prepared Marilyn is a masterpiece of contained fury. But this is Michelle Williams' movie, who captures the "blond bombshell" persona that Norma Jeane so carefully created. Williams doesn't try to explain Marilyn, but she succeeds beautifully in showing us her many sides, without apology, without filters or distance. It's a beguiling performance, and a superb film.