Review No.84: W.E.

I think there are stigmas attached to certain directors who are known for their work in other areas and I think that applies more than most to Madonna who has recently presented her second directorial effort W.E. The film, which Madge has also co-written, is at first glance a biographical look at the life of Wallis Simpson the twice-divorced American who fell in love and later married King Edward VIII who in turn had to abdicate in order to marry her. Though somewhere along the line either Madonna, or more likely someone at the studio, thought that this subject matter would be a little too dry so has added a modern element in the form of 1998 Manhattan resident Wally Winthrop who has been named after Mrs Simpson as the other females in her family were obsessed by her. Wally has put her life on hold in order to become a loving wife to brilliant therapist William and wants to have a child by him even though he isn't too keen on the prospect. When a plethora of items relating to Wallis Simpson come up for sale at Sotheby's Wally takes an interest in them spending a lot of time at the auction house and eventually befriending a kindly Eastern European security guard by the name of Evengi. As Wally starts to look at the items we see flashbacks to the life of Wallis Simpson from the reason her two marriages broke down to her romance of Edward and their subsequent exile out of England. Wally begins to realise she has more in common with Wallis then she first thought as the former's marriage starts to crumble she gets a new understanding of the royal romance seeing things from a different perspective. The film ends with a very surreal moment in which the two Wallys have an imagined conversation on a bench and this is where I really started to worry about the sanity of the modern day version of the character obviously trapped in some kind of delusion but with nobody to help her.

It would be incredibly easy for me to be terribly sniffy about W.E. so firstly I will tell you what's good about it. I feel that a lot of work has gone in to styling the character of Wallis Simpson and Arianne Philips' costume design is possibly the best thing about the film although I'm still not sure if it deserved an Oscar nomination. As Wallis Simpson, Andrea Riseborough is the only member of the cast who escapes from the film with an iota of dignity as she rises above the lousy script to create as complex a character as she could as a woman who just can't help the man she falls in love with just happens to be a royal. Generally the Edward and Mrs Simpson plot feels a bit like a potted history of the abdication as we are shown faux newsreel of the King's last speech before handing his role over to his brother. This does fit in nicely with people who watched The King's Speech last year, and I'm sure this was one way in which the marketing department tried to entice an audience to see it, however Laurence Fox's performance almost feels like a caricature of the one Colin Firth delivered in Tom Hooper's film. I did though appreciate the fact that a little continuity had been placed in the casting of the royal family as Fox's father Edward appears as King George though there isn't another Fox that could play Edward so James D'arcy steps into that role. Where W.E. really falls apart is in the modern day storyline due to the fact that Abbie Cornish's main direction seems to be look a bit sad or gaze at this beautiful antique jewellery. I have to say that there was some unintentional hilarity in the fights between Wally and husband William with the film's most brutal moment, in which he physically abuses his wife, coming off like a scene from a slapstick comedy as the scene is so melodramatic it's hard not to laugh especially when you consider that he's angry that she's spent over $10,000 on a pair of Wallis' gloves. The attempt to create a romance between Wallie and the security guard is also very slapdash and uninspiring as they start to get it on after he is impressed by the way she plays piano.

Madonna also employs some very heavy-handed techniques to try and work in the story of Princess Diana into the final stages of the film with Wallie's summation of what Wallis' life would've been like which is subtetly worked in via a conversation with an actor playing Mohammed Al-Fayed. For a film with a strong historical aspect it doesn't seem to have been researched all that well which is demonstrated in one scene when newsreel is shown announcing that George III had died when most of us now that Edward's father was George V. Finally a brief word about the music as Madonna has tried to go all Moulin Rouge on us by having the 1920s characters dance to contemporary music such as the Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant again this another elemnt of the film that just comes off as gimmicky. I did in fact find it hard to keep track of the two separate storylines as Madonna made us play a game not of Where's Wally? but more Which Wally? At the end of the day though I felt the only real Wally was me for sitting through this terrible film only redeemed slightly by Riseborough and the pretty costumes.

Verdict: While I can't say I wasn't entertained most of this was due to unintentional hilarity because for the most part Madonna's film is just terrible only be saved slightly thanks to Riseborough's superb performance and the Oscar-nominated outfits therefore I will award it 3/10