Is Dakota Johnson’s Marilyn Monroe film ‘Flesh Impact’ worth watching? Reviews pour in before release

Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn portray different versions of Marilyn Monroe in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Venice short

Marilyn Monroe has been portrayed on screen countless times, but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Flesh Impact takes an unusual approach by imagining the Hollywood icon as a 100 year old woman. The short film, starring Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn as different versions of Monroe, premiered at the 83rd VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL on September 7.

The film was created to mark what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday and was presented by Genesis. According to the official Venice programme, Flesh Impact runs for 22 minutes and is directed and written by Gyllenhaal, with Johnson, Burstyn, Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi making up the principal cast.

The central idea is deliberately impossible. Monroe died on August 4, 1962, aged 36, so the film imagines a life in which she survived and reached 100. Burstyn plays this older version of Monroe, while Johnson portrays Monroe during the height of her fame. The result gives audiences two different perspectives on the same cultural figure rather than attempting to recreate Monroe through a conventional biographical story.

The story follows Burstyn’s Monroe as she arrives for an audition and reflects on her life, career and experiences as an actress. Johnson appears in sequences connected to Monroe’s younger years, creating a link between the woman she was and the older woman the film imagines she could have become.

That casting makes Burstyn particularly significant to the project. At 93, the Oscar winning actress brings a lifetime of acting experience to a role imagining Monroe at an age she never reached. Burstyn also received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at Venice during the festival, adding another layer to the film’s celebration of acting and longevity.

Johnson’s casting attracted attention before the premiere after first look images showed her transformed into Monroe. Gyllenhaal, however, has explained that she was not interested in making the younger Monroe work purely through physical resemblance. The director said Johnson’s performance ultimately became more compelling when it was allowed to exist without an artificial recreation of Monroe’s face.

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Gyllenhaal also revealed that she experimented with artificial intelligence during production after the film’s commissioners asked her to explore the technology. The process involved licensed material featuring Monroe and an attempt to place Monroe’s face over Johnson’s performance. Gyllenhaal eventually removed the experiment, saying the result failed to preserve the human quality that attracted her to the project in the first place. Variety reported that she felt Johnson’s own performance was more moving and alive without the AI transformation.

That decision gives Flesh Impact another point of interest beyond its Marilyn Monroe subject. The film becomes partly concerned with performance itself, including the difference between reproducing an image and allowing an actor to interpret a famous figure. Gyllenhaal’s official director statement also describes the project as a film about being an artist in the public eye and specifically about actresses, while acknowledging that the story reflects aspects of Monroe, Burstyn, Johnson and Gyllenhaal herself.

For viewers interested in Marilyn Monroe, classic Hollywood or contemporary conversations about artificial intelligence in filmmaking, Flesh Impact offers a particularly unusual combination. It is also brief enough to function as a compact festival film rather than a conventional feature length biopic.

There is currently no announced general release date for Flesh Impact. Its Venice run includes public screenings on September 8, following its world premiere on September 7.