Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘Flesh Impact’ has its North American premiere today at the Carmel Film Festival

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s short film “Flesh Impact” has its North American premiere today (Friday, 2 October) at the Carmel International Film Festival (Carmel-by-the-Sea, California), where it is shown as a “Special Judge’s Selection” at 14:00 at the Golden Bough Playhouse, as the festival itself announces. The title was added to the programme as a last-minute announcement, on 18 September.

The film imagines a 100-year-old Marilyn Monroe — the legendary star would have turned 100 on 1 June this year — who auditions for Tennessee Williams’s play “Orpheus Descending”. On stage, she revisits her life, the “systematic” humiliations and, in the end, her death. The title is a quotation of Billy Wilder’s description of Monroe’s screen presence. In the leading roles are Ellen Burstyn, 93, and Dakota Johnson, both playing Marilyn Monroe; Peter Sarsgaard plays the director and Sepideh Moafi the casting director.

“Flesh Impact” was commissioned by the Genesis company for the 100th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth and is a co-production of Superprime, INNOCEAN USA and The Cut. The world premiere was held out of competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, on 7 September, where Gyllenhaal herself served as jury president. Gyllenhaal, a BAFTA and Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee, has had the title well received by critics: according to TheWrap, Steve Pond called the film “a lovely reverie delivered by a ghost, but it also has bite”, while the BBC’s Nicholas Barber described it as a “warm-hearted 17-minute charmer”.

The fourth edition of the Carmel International Film Festival takes place on 1–4 October and is opened by Edward Burns, with presenter Will Roberts, the “Oppenheimer” actor. The programme includes 12 feature films, 34 short films and 6 discussion panels, while the Lifetime Achievement award goes to producer Stephen Nemeth. The festival devotes retrospectives to director Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption”) and composer Mark Mancina.