My Week with Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe was probably ahead of her time. During the 1950s, the starlet captivated Hollywood before the proliferation of celebrity-gossip websites or the days of 24-hour cable news channels.

Pondering how Monroe would have fit into today’s cultural landscape adds to the fun of watching My Week with Marilyn, based on a memoir about an aspiring young filmmaker who developed an intimate backstage relationship with Monroe on the set of one of her high-profile films.

In many ways, the film’s protagonist, 24-year-old Colin Clark, fulfills a fantasy shared by several members of the audience when it comes to meeting their favorite movie star. He developed a fleeting friendship with an icon.

The film features a terrific performance by Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) as Monroe. Williams captures both the outward playfulness and the inner turmoil of an actress portrayed in the film as being more misunderstood than incompetent.

Clark (Eddie Redmayne) was initially less interested in meeting Monroe than he was in working with legendary actor and filmmaker Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) on the crew of the forgettable London-based comedy The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956.

But his duties as third assistant director turned him into a liaison between Olivier and the sycophantic entourage of Monroe, who was consistently late for filming, forgetful of her lines and exhibiting diva-like behavior.

Monroe, who was married at the time to playwright Arthur Miller, eventually found Clark to be a trustworthy confidant and revealed deep secrets about herself, turning their relationship into a brief romance.

The film, which marks the feature debut of British television veteran Simon Curtis, is not a biopic of Monroe as much as it is a glimpse into a significant period in her life. It only hints at her troubled childhood and never mentions her tragic death.

My Week with Marilyn offers an uneven mix of two storylines, that of the behind-the-scenes squabbling on the film set and the private time together with Monroe and Clark. Film buffs will find Olivier a more interesting character than Clark, and therefore the relationship between Monroe and Olivier feels more interesting than that of Monroe and Clark. But gossip hounds might disagree.

Either way, the film is an intriguing glimpse into old-time Hollywood through an otherwise mundane partnership of two of its biggest stars.

Rated PG-13, 99 minutes.