The primary problem is that I’m not sure where these stories overlap and why.

Film Review

Title: W.E.

Directed By Madonna

Stars: Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D'Arcy, Oscar Isaac

Studio: eOne/The Weinstein Company

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Release Date: February 3, 2012

Reviewed By Adam A. Donaldson

Only in the directorial hands of Madonna could so vexing a movie as W.E. be brought to the screen. Although technically very well made, like a music video or a perfume ad, it feels like Madonna has two movies in one with W.E., a film that tells parallel stories of a modern Manhattanite struggling with her marriage and the desire for children, and the life story of Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee whose love affair brought about the end of the reign of King Edward VIII.

The primary problem is that I’m not sure where these stories overlap and why. Both women are named Wallis, Simpson’s present day New York counterpart was named for her, of course. Wally, as she’s called (played by Abbie Cornish), feels a kinship with Simpson (played by Andrea Riseborough) across the decades. She spends her days in an exhibit of Simpson artefacts at Sotherby’s, getting lost amongst the relics as her marriage falters believing her husband to be unfaithful, and she struggles to get pregnant using fertility drugs.

Simpson’s story, meanwhile, should at least be on the surface familiar to movie viewers as it was touched upon in last year’s Oscar Best Picture winner The King’s Speech. The inclusion of W.E. in this past year’s Toronto International Film Festival is interesting if only because it offers the antithesis to Speech by showing King Edward’s side of the abdication scandal. In W.E., King George VI is portrayed as a ditherer who differs to the snap judgement of Queen Elizabeth, which I guess is only fair since King’s Speech made Edward out to be rash and impudent and under the sway of an American tart. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle on all counts.

Still, the correlation between the two stories escapes me. While Wally struggles to get pregnant, Wallis’s own conception struggles are barely touched upon. Wally starts a relationship with a Russian security guard at Sotherby’s, leaving her husband, a rich and successful doctor; Wallis, meanwhile, marries two commoners before literally finding her prince. Only Wally’s obsession seems to tie them in any kind of meaningful way, and her story borders on soap opera while Madonna’s recounting of the life of Wallis seems more about dispelling the perception that Wallis Simpson was basically the Yoko Ono of 1930s Britain.

If anything, that’s the downfall of the story: it tries to push an overarching grand importance to the love story of W.E. – which stands for Wallis and Edward, by the way – that I really think doesn’t exist. There’s a scene where Edward talks with Wallis about how Members of Parliament are labelling him a ‘socialist,’ which feels like it’s in their because it’s a hot button word in current American politics. There was also an oblique comparison between Edward and Wallis’s relationship and the one between Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi el Fayed that I thought was stretching it. If you’re not sure the former was a great modern romance, then you know I think the latter isn’t.

But while I’m unconvinced the film works on the whole, there were parts of it I did like. There’s a wonderful comedic aspect to Wallis and Edward’s early courtship. Wallis is asked by her friend Thelma, who was seeing the King prior to Wallis, to keep him company while she’s overseas. The Wallis/Edward romance grows from this time together, and during it she was still married to Ernest Simpson, who repeatedly comes home to find the King being entertained by his wife in the parlour. There’s a bizarre kind of Three’s Company comedy of misunderstanding to these scenes, Ernest entering the scene saying, “Your Royal Highness, what are you doing here?” Then later, after Wallis and Edward make their intentions known, we see Edward after breaking the news to Ernest saying, “You’ve been incredibly decent about this, old chap.” The scene is downright Python-esque.

Aside from unintentional (or intentional) comedy, the two leading actresses were also very good. Andrea Riseborough as Wallis seems to step right out of time with the look and sound of a sophisticated woman of the 30s. She is very, very good, much better than she needed to be, and she definitely had a presence and magnetism on screen. Abbie Cornish is great too, and you can’t help but love her and feel for her despite the fact that her soap opera life is horribly contrived. It’s not hard to root for the security guard with the heart of poet, especially when the bastard doctor husband makes Billy Zane’s role in Titanic look three dimensional, but I think Isaac would have made it easy anyway.

So in an interesting turn of fate, Madonna solicits some impressive performances from her actors despite a weak script that she also co-wrote. W.E. is a perplexing film that has a lot to say, but struggles with just how to say it. It’s melodramatic to a fault, but it does have some genuine humanity and can be, at least, interesting to watch. As a feature directorial debut, I’ve seen worse, and at least Madonna’s got the visual aesthetics down to fine art. As a director for hire, she might have the chops, as a filmmaker though, somebody needs to find Robert McKee’s phone number fast.

Written by :

Adam