W.E. is Madonna’s second outing as a film director, and this tells ‘the greatest royal love story of the 20th century’ via two women separated by more than half a century: Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and a modern-day New Yorker, Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a society wife who becomes obsessed with Mrs Simpson when her possessions come up for auction at Sotheby’s. These days, it is common practice to ridicule and deride Madonna — just who does she think she is? And so on — but I am not of this camp, believe this film has much to teach us, and the top ten lessons are as follows.
1. I now know that Sotheby’s appears happy for anyone to truck up at any time, day or night, open or closed, and rummage through auction items as if fondling bits of tat at a car boot sale. I plan to pop along this evening and, if all goes well, will upturn a priceless Chinese vase and wear it as a hat.
2. With the right amount of directorial mishandling, you can utterly waste the talent of two actresses who are otherwise first-class. This directorial mishandling must include clunky montages, slo-mo, jump cuts between two narratives that are banally connected but fail to inform each other, and a camera that takes for ever just to shoot a tree which isn’t even an interesting tree. With all this in place, your actresses will not stand a chance. I am now so convinced of this that if you try it, and it does not work, I will give you your money back. No questions asked.
3. Ms Winthrop falls for a Sotheby’s security guard (Oscar Isaac), who, it turns out, lives in a chic, super-spacious loft apartment with grand piano. From this, one can only deduce that such security guards must earn upwards of $200,000 a year. I am now planning to go to New York to work as a security guard myself. Chances are, I will go tomorrow, but not on the earliest flight as wearing a priceless Chinese vase as a hat may be tiring, and I may well require a lie-in.
4. A woman’s obsession with an historical character who, at times, she even imagines is in the room with her, giving her little pep talks and cooing comforting coos — ‘I’ll always be here for you’ — is not psychotic or deranged. This behaviour is perfectly normal, perfectly acceptable, and may even be both tasteful and admirable.
5. Edward (James D’Arcy) and Mrs Simpson once romped to the Sex Pistols’ song ‘Pretty Vacant’ while off their heads on amphetamines. You will not learn this from any other source. More bizarrely, children aren’t even taught this at school. It’s a disgrace.
6. If you aren’t up to giving a film some soul, or even a point, you can always opt, instead, for a luxury object fetish, and drooling close-ups of monogrammed linen and fine china teacups and Cartier jewellery and gorgeous period frocks, which the camera practically licks.
7. Madonna co-wrote this and I now know a cloth-ear for dialogue should never be allowed to hold you back. You may even want to have one character saying to another, ‘Is this our destiny?’
8. Mrs Simpson was not a social climbing piece of work, or a bit of a slut. She has, apparently, been much misunderstood and was a lovely, sympathetic, selfless woman who gave up as much to marry Edward as Edward did himself. So there. Also, neither Edward nor Wallis were Nazi sympathisers — ‘Just a rumour,’ declares Wally, conclusively — even though the Duke and Duchess were honoured guests of Hitler at his Berchtesgaden retreat as late as 1937.
9. If you are sufficiently in thrall to wealth, power and privilege, you can create a film in which Mohamed al-Fayed, who owns some of the Duchess’s letters, even comes out of it well. In truth, he is actually a darling, and a sweetie-pie.
10. Two hours can seem like five.
Thinking about it, does this sound like a film you want to see? Probably not, I suppose. OK, I give in. Madonna: who does she think she is?
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