A presence so vivid you feel you could reach out and touch it. Flesh Impact, taking its title from Billy Wilder’s famous remark, begins with a single premise: Now, a century after her birth, what would Marilyn Monroe be like if she were still alive? With Ellen Burstyn and Dakota Johnson playing Monroe in her later years and her youth, respectively, the film reconstructs her life in the form of an audition. As the story unfolds onstage, tactile memories of childhood become entwined with the image of the star whom everyone would later desire, and we are quickly drawn in as Monroe wryly recounts how that image was packaged and sold. When the Monroes of different ages overlap onscreen, the portrait of the legendary actress comes alive across time. Rather than excavating the ‘real Monroe’ behind the image, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film gives her the years she never had the chance to live, rewriting the star’s myth as a performance in the present tense.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is an Academy Award-nominated actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. She left a lasting impression with her performances in films such as Donnie Darko (2001), Secretary (2002), and The Dark Knight (2008). She made her feature directorial debut with The Lost Daughter (2021), adapted from the novel by Elena Ferrante, winning Best Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival and the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Feature Film. She subsequently directed her second feature, The Bride! (2026).
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
