SYBIL IN A WONDERBRA

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Astounding desirability does not ensure happiness or even a sense of self-worth; in fact, astounding desirability can be a crippling burden. This is the moral of Marilyn Monroe's life, at least according to the countless essays, more than a dozen biographies, five movies, three documentaries and one Elton John song devoted to the subject of Monroe's misery. Is there an American left--with the possible exception of Norman Mailer--for whom she hasn't been completely, irrevocably demystified, for whom a brand-new TV movie could possibly be enlightening?

HBO clearly thinks there are many such viewers. The network's latest self-produced offering is Norma Jean and Marilyn, which premieres this Saturday (9 p.m. EDT). The movie retells the story of the star's childhood as Norma Jean Baker, an orphan who was tossed about from guardian to guardian. The movie also subjects her psyche to the obvious analysis that 10 [cent] fanzines were serving up back in the '50s: the actress wanted the love of all because she remained at her core a pained and lonely soul. HBO's attempt at added value is to give us two separate Marilyns, the aggressive young fame seeker and the fragile screen goddess she became, played by two separate actresses.

First we have Ashley Judd, whose Norma Jean is a feminist out of a Camille Paglia fever dream--a firecracker of a young woman fully aware of her ravaging sex appeal and ready to use it. Neither victim nor naif, she knows the rules of Hollywood's seedy game and seems to relish playing it. She beds her boyfriend Eddie's old uncle to get to William Morris agent Johnny Hyde and so on. Judd's performance is the high point of this absurd psychoanalytic adventure. She makes Norma's detached determination admirable and repulsive all at once as she rattles off lines like "I'm going to be in the goddam movies if I have to f--- Bela Lugosi to get there." Amazingly, Judd says this without making us laugh.

The complicated question of how all that twisted feistiness evaporated is something Norma Jean and Marilyn doesn't address seriously. All of a sudden, mid-film, Norma goes platinum blond and reappears as Marilyn in the guise of Mira Sorvino, who puts on the expected vapory whisper (Judd's Norma Jean voice is steely and commanding). Now we get to wallow in a more familiar portrayal of the star as a self-loathing pill popper as dumb as a house pet. The men close to her--first Joe DiMaggio, then Arthur Miller--ignore and mock her. A vocal coach she falls for derides her unformed vocabulary. And yet, for all that, Sorvino doesn't give us a sufficiently tortured Marilyn. Teetering around in her mules, she gives us a Harvard-educated actress who seems to be having too good a time playing a woman who, this film suggests, did not know what the words terrine and inert mean.

But Sorvino should not be blamed for this movie's flaws, not when she and Judd are forced to appear in scenes together as the star's fractured, warring selves. This is when the film resembles a Carol Burnett Show sketch. "So now instead of trying to make spaghetti," Norma Jean says to Marilyn during the DiMaggio-to-Miller transition, "you're going to make matzoh balls." Oy.