Marilyn Monroe plays a woman who dreams of becoming ‘Marilyn Monroe’. Chérie, a saloon singer who believes she will someday make it to Hollywood, meets Bo, a cowboy from Montana. Falling instantly in love, Bo impulsively presses her to marry him, repeatedly calling her ‘Cherry’ instead of ‘Chérie’ as he tries to confine her to his own idealized image of an angel. After completing The Seven Year Itch (1955), leaving Hollywood to study acting in New York, and signing a new contract with Fox, Monroe chose Bus Stop (1956) as her comeback vehicle. Here, Monroe wears deliberately pale makeup and intentionally sings off-key, roughening up her own image. As Chérie, striving to become a star, overlaps onscreen with Monroe, who has already become one, a fascinating tension emerges between a gaze that seeks to fix a woman in a single image and Monroe’s own performance, which forges a new image from within that very frame. (HAM Yoonjeong)