Review of Madonna's W.E., starring Abbie Cornish, Oscar Isaac, James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough.
Following her Superbowl halftime show and her forthcoming world tour, there's little doubt that Madonna remains a relevant pop culture icon. She's still sassy and brassy, and she wants to be seen and talked about. Of course, that kind of fame has its drawbacks, so when you look back on her career, it's easy to understand why she'd be drawn to a person in history like Wallis Simpson, the straightforward American divorcee whose illicit relationship with the King of England led to his abdicating the throne in the name of love. That would make perfect sense to the Material Girl, a passionate individual who has endured her fair share of slings and arrows at the hands of the press, but perfect sense isn't enough to make her new film, W.E., a good one.
Madonna directed the new picture, and though we never actually see her on screen, we see her constantly in Andrea Riseborough, the British actress who plays Simpson, which is clearly a part Madonna would have loved to have gotten a shotbst two decades ago. The movie vacillates between Simpsons' story and that of Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a contemporary Southern girl married to a successful doctor, William (Richard Coyle), but who is incredibly unhappy in her privileged life. She's sad and lonely and obsessed with Wallis Simpson, whom she is named for and whom she feels is a kindred spirit, because she feels both of them gave up a great deal for love, but their sacrifices were never acknowledged. That kinship is played out far too often, as the two characters share the screen, interacting with one another that is either exceedingly pretentious, or which speaks to a psychotic breakdown in Wally. Either way, when Sotheby's holds an auction of Wallis and Edward's (James D'Arcy) possessions, she finds herself visiting on a daily basis, where she makes a deep connection with Evgeni (Oscar Isaac), a Russian security guard who takes an interest in her.
It is one of Wally's friends who calls their very existence the lifestyles of the rich and shameless, and that's precisely the problem with W.E. While it's an interesting enough notion to turn a historical figure like Simpson into a real, understandable, relatable person, in the end it's hard to care about any of them, because they really are so excessively wealthy. I'm all for trying to understand everyone in society, but W.E. plays out like Julie and Julia for the 1%. What's more interesting with Wally's obsession with Wallis is Madonna's, because in this woman of history she clearly believes she has found someone who understands what she has gone through. Early on, Wallis tells Wally that she's doing the best with what she's got, which is exactly what we've all said about Madonna for years. World's greatest singer? Nope. Best dancer? Nope. Terrific actress? Uh-uh. Oscar-caliber director? 'Fraid not. But someway, somehow, the little girl from Detroit has remained a fixture in the cultural scene. What the film also says is that your prince can come in many forms. He can be a smart man slumming in a suit, or actual royalty. But those parallels aren't well played out, perhaps because so much time and energy was spent on the cinematography, which is often beautiful, but just as often deathly pretentious. Also, the movie clocks in at two hours, which is at least 20 painful minutes too long.