One of the signals of whether a prestige film with its eyes set on Oscar will hit the mark or flop is how well it does at Cannes or Venice. These are two time-tested proving grounds where leaving in a loud huff and clapping so long your hands go numb are the only correct reactions to a movie.
Luckily for Andrew Dominik, Venice seems to be into his Blonde. According to Variety, the film where Ana De Armas plays a largely fictionalized Marilyn Monroe earned a 14-minute standing ovation after playing the fest, leaving De Armas in tears and cementing the film in the conversation for all the major awards.
Dominik, whose last narrative feature was Killing Them Softly in 2012, had taken a hiatus to focus on producing and making music documentaries. He wrote the script for Blonde from the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name, which explored Monroe as a cultural icon and included tantalizing gossip with famous, real-world characters referred to by code names or initials.
Of course, Cannes has a longer, more established history of clapping an absurd amount for movies. Its longest was for Pan’s Labyrinth at a whopping 22 minutes of cheering while not sitting back down. Meanwhile, Venice just gave a 13-minute ovation to Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. According to science, Blonde is exactly one minute better. Because that’s how all art is judged.
All kidding aside, try clapping for 14 minutes straight. I assume you’ll be dehydrated and enter a trancelike state that lets you see past lives. Humans are so weird.
Blonde, which has retained its NC-17 rating, hits Netflix September 28th.
