W.E.

[CaptainWaggett]

Sounds essential viewing for the Royalists among us

W.E. | Film review | Xan Brooks | Film | The Guardian

W.E. – review

Madonna's jaw-dropping take on the story of Wallis Simpson is a primped and simpering folly, preening and fatally mishandled
1 / 5
Social climber … Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in Madonna's W.E. The film has made the wrong sort of splash in Venice

Whatever the crimes committed by Wallis Simpson – marrying a king, sparking a constitutional crisis, fraternising with Nazis – it's doubtful that she deserves the treatment meted out to her in W.E., Madonna's jaw-dropping take on "the 20th-century's greatest royal love story". The woman is defiled, humiliated, made to look like a joke. The fact that W.E. comes couched in the guise of a fawning, servile snow-job only makes the punishment

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• • Xan Brooks
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 September 2011 14.10 BST
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Social climber … Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in Madonna's W.E. The film has made the wrong sort of splash in Venice

Whatever the crimes committed by Wallis Simpson – marrying a king, sparking a constitutional crisis, fraternising with Nazis – it's doubtful that she deserves the treatment meted out to her in W.E., Madonna's jaw-dropping take on "the 20th-century's greatest royal love story". The woman is defiled, humiliated, made to look like a joke. The fact that W.E. comes couched in the guise of a fawning, servile snow-job only makes the punishment feel all the more cruel.



Or could it be that Madonna is in deadly earnest here? If so, her film is more risible than we had any right to expect; a primped and simpering folly, the turkey that dreamed it was a peacock. Andrea Riseborough stars as Wallis, the perky American social climber who meets Edward VIII (James D'Arcy) in London, where she is drawn like a magnet to his pursed lips and peevish air.
Yet Madonna has also taken the decision to run Wallis's story in tandem with the story of Wally (Abbie Cornish), a trophy wife in 1990s New York, who totters in and out of the drama like a doped pony. Wally, it transpires, was named after Wallis and is obsessed by the woman to a degree that struck me as deeply worrying, but which Madonna presents as evidence of impeccable good taste.
From time to time, the ghost of Wallis even pays Wally a call to dispense beauty tips or comfort her when she's lying injured on the bathroom floor. "I'm here," coos Wallis. "I'll always be here." And seldom has a promise sounded more like a threat.
Madonna wants us to see these two as spiritual twins, in that they are both dazzled by expensive trinkets and searching desperately for love. We know instantly that Wallis's first husband is a wrong 'un because he drags her from the bath and beats her, and we are invited to take a similar view of Wally's spouse when he starts claiming that Wallis and Edward were Nazi-sympathisers, which is patently absurd. "They might have been naive," Wally scolds him. "That doesn't mean that they were Nazis."
What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is. It may even surpass 2008's Filth and Wisdom, Madonna's calamitous first outing as a film-maker. Her direction is so all over the shop that it barely qualifies as direction at all.
W.E. gives us slo-mo and jump cuts and a crawling crane shot up a tree in Balmoral, but they are all just tricks without a purpose. For her big directoral flourish, Madonna has Wallis bound on stage to dance with a Masai tribesman while Pretty Vacant blares on the soundtrack. But why? What point is she making? That social-climbing Wallis-Simpson was the world's first punk-rocker? That – see! – a genuine Nazi-sympathiser would never dream of dancing with an African? Who can say? My guess is that she could have had Wallis dressed as a clown, bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower to the strains of The Birdy Song and it would have served her story just as well.
Xan Brooks

[dpgmel]

This seems to have got very mixed reviews some papers hating it others praising it to the skies.

[Steve Crook]

What does the "W.E." of the title mean? Or are we supposed to watch the film to find out?

Steve

[Mark O]

What does the "W.E." of the title mean? Or are we supposed to watch the film to find out?

Steve

Wallis and Edward

I'll go and see it, but I'm not expecting too much, I admire Andrea, she's an 'everywoman' type of actress, played a young Margaret Thatcher and then back-seat Brenda in Made in Dagenham.

[Mr Sloane]

What does the "W.E." of the title mean? Or are we supposed to watch the film to find out?

Steve

I guess Wallis and Edward even though his name was David.

[CaptainWaggett]

This seems to have got very mixed reviews some papers hating it others praising it to the skies.

W.E. review: Madonna makes us all fall in love with Mrs Simpson | Mail Online

I see James Fox is George V and Laurence Fox is George VI. Which is rather neat casting.

[Mark O]

W.E. review: Madonna makes us all fall in love with Mrs Simpson | Mail Online

I see James Fox is George V and Laurence Fox is George VI. Which is rather neat casting.

Yes, though I'm wondering if the Sex Pistols songs mentioned in the article are heard whilst the Duke is still alive?............maybe he didn't die in 1972 and remained in a coma for the next five years, Sex Pistols and other punk songs would make any sane person want to exit this world.

[Nick Dando]

What does the "W.E." of the title mean? Or are we supposed to watch the film to find out?

Steve

I thought it was going to be a biopic of the author of the Biggles and Worrals stories, Captain W. E. Johns.

Nick

[CaptainWaggett]

Yes, though I'm wondering if the Sex Pistols songs mentioned in the article are heard whilst the Duke is still alive?............maybe he didn't die in 1972 and remained in a coma for the next five years, Sex Pistols and other punk songs would make any sane person want to exit this world.

It's done in the style of Baz Lurhmann or the recent Marie Antoinette with the deliberate use of anachronistic pop songs.

[Steve Crook]

I thought it was going to be a biopic of the author of the Biggles and Worrals stories, Captain W. E. Johns.

Nick

That's what I wondered

Wallis and Edward

Then why not call it that? Then at least some people might know what it was about

I guess Wallis and Edward even though his name was David.

Well, Madonna is American, poor dear. She can't be expected to know these things

Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

That's what I wondered


Then why not call it that? Then at least some people might know what it was about


Well, Madonna is American, poor dear. She can't be expected to know these things

Steve

According to one review it was what the ghastly couple called themselves - they had all their napkin rings and cufflinks and stuff engraved with an entwined W.E. Aaah...

[Windyridge]

According to one review it was what the ghastly couple called themselves - they had all their napkin rings and cufflinks and stuff engraved with an entwined W.E. Aaah...

I wonder if Madonna's included a scene showing the (alleged) painting of Wallis's toenails by David? Alec Guinness was at a party with them and the Duke asked him to get him a drink in a "small" glass. Guinness could only find a medium sized glass, whereupon the Duke had hysterics, screaming: "I said A SMALL GLASS! A SMALL GLASS! A SMALL GLASS"! Yuck.

[Steve Crook]

I wonder if Madonna's included a scene showing the (alleged) painting of Wallis's toenails by David? Alec Guinness was at a party with them and the Duke asked him to get him a drink in a "small" glass. Guinness could only find a medium sized glass, whereupon the Duke had hysterics, screaming: "I said A SMALL GLASS! A SMALL GLASS! A SMALL GLASS"! Yuck.

That's the trouble with people who are brought up or are used to being surrounded by sycophants. A few survive and manage to remain being nice people, but a lot start to believe in their own importance

Steve

[didi-5]

W.E. review: Madonna makes us all fall in love with Mrs Simpson | Mail Online

I see James Fox is George V and Laurence Fox is George VI. Which is rather neat casting.

Yes, given Edward Fox was a previous Edward VIII in 'Edward and Mrs Simpson', which was probably the best version of this story done so far, Cynthia Harris was quite a sympathetic Wallis. 'The Women He Loved' with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour was watchable, and 'Wallis and Edward', the most recent version, was poor.

I guess I'll be watching this one.

[batman]

Sex Pistols and other punk songs would make any sane person want to exit this world.

I am sane (although my psychiatrist might disagree) and I love the Sex Pistols music and many, many other punk rock songs. I particularly like this one ....

[Mark O]

I am sane (although my psychiatrist might disagree) and I love the Sex Pistols music and many, many other punk rock songs. I particularly like this one ....

oops.............put my size 13 in it again, didn't mean anything personal, but I'm sure know that Bats.

I recall the last year at School was the Punk 'explosion', I recall one lad coming in with a safety pin wedged into the corner of his mouth, takes all sorts I guess, though I did like some of Siouxsie and the Banshees stuff.

[CaptainWaggett]

Madonna to re-edit W.E. ahead of December release | Film | guardian.co.uk