"I have never
known one person so utterly possessed by another as he was by her."
Madonna has made an indelible mark on pop culture as one of
the most successful pop singers of all time. Yet, she was never able to achieve
the same success in the film industry, despite her larger-than-life stage
persona. Though she appeared in hit films like Dick Tracy and A League of
Their Own, Madonna will be inexorably linked to critically derided flops
like Body of Evidence and Swept Away, directed by her then-husband
Guy Ritchie. With acting not panning out, Madonna decided to try her luck
behind the camera and made her directorial debut with 2008's Filth and Wisdom. A dark comedy set in a
world of S&M, strip clubs, and drug addicts; it also received poor reviews
from the critics.
After going for seedy and shocking, Madonna tries to court
the highbrow arthouse audience with her sophomore effort, W.E. The film is based on the controversial love affair between King
Edward VIII and a twice-divorced American named Wallis Simpson. Their relationship
was glimpsed partly in The King's Speech
as Edward abdicated the throne in order to marry Wallis, much to the dismay of
the royal family and an entire country. The couple was also dogged by rumors of
being Nazi sympathizers after visiting Hitler in 1937. Madonna herself had been
fascinated by their story for years, relating how the very mention of their
name at a soiree was like throwing a Molotov cocktail into the room.
Rather than tell a straight biopic about Wallis Simpson,
Madonna relates her story through the struggles of a young socialite in 1998.
Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) seems to have a life little girls dream about.
She's married to a successful doctor and lives in a ritzy apartment in
Manhattan. Yet, Wally is unsuccessful in her attempts to get pregnant. Even
worse, her husband, William (Richard Coyle), no longer desires to have children
and becomes physically and mentally abusive. Wally becomes obsessed with her
namesake when a collection of personal items belonging to Edward and Wallis are
put up for auction at Sotheby's. There, Wally becomes friends with a Russian
security guard named Evgeni (Oscar Isaac), who happens to be the sensitive type
that plays Rachmaninoff on the piano. Madonna intercuts Wally's plights with
those of Wallis (Andrea Riseborough), who suffered abuse at the hands of her
first husband before leaving her second husband for Edward (James D'Arcy).
Despite the love they share, the royal family refuses to accept Wallis.
It's clear why Madonna chose to tell the story of Wallis and
Edward from the point-of-view of Wallis. Both women have seen their marriages
become tabloid fodder and both have spent their lives fending off paparazzi and
unwanted publicity. However, the screenplay by Madonna and Alek Keshishian, the
director of her hit documentary Truth or
Dare, lacks any sort of subtlety as evidenced by an opening sequence where
a naked and pregnant Wallis is brutally beaten on a bathroom floor and left in
a pool of blood. Worse yet, it's exceedingly dull with an endless stream of
mopey melodrama. Then, W.E. gets
downright laughable when the heroines cross space and time to share furtive
glances and fortune cookie platitudes. Another sequence sees a dour party
thrown by the controversial couple turned into a drug fueled rave as the dapper
denizens trip out on Benzedrine. The anachronistic "Pretty Vacant" by
the Sex Pistols plays over the sequence, which seems to contradict Madonna's
hypothesis that Wallis was a woman of unsung substance.
When the film isn't muddled by Madonna's messy direction, it
actually looks pretty good thanks to the production design by Martin Childs (Shakespeare in Love) and the costumes by
Arianne Phillips (A Single Man), both
of whom are Oscar winners. Andrea Riseborough makes a fine accounting for
herself in the role of Wallis Simpson. Strong and opinionated, it's easy to see
why someone might give up an empire for her. Too bad she wasn't given better
material to work with. It's also a shame that none of the other actors give any
sort of a memorable performance. Abbie Cornish, James D'Arcy, and Oscar Isaac
are all bland while the father-son duo of James and Laurence Fox (who play King
George V and the stuttering Bertie) deserved more screen time.
Madonna may have left her mark in the music industry, but
she has yet to make an admirable impression in her nascent career as a director.
W.E. is plagued by questionable editing,
unsightly scene composition, and a script that is a downright bore.
Rating: * (*****)
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