Santa Cruz local Arianne Phillips got an Oscar nod for her costuming work on the film.
Wielding her obsession with übercelebrity Wallis Simpson like a wand of Maybelline extra black mascara, Madonna has made a better film than we expected. Not too much, mind you. But the Material Girl–turned-matron is certainly a better director than her former husband, the woebegone Guy Ritchie. In league with co-script writer Alek Keshishian, Madonna unleashes her own conflicts with high-profile fame and disastrous romance in this opulent chick flick about two women, both named Wallis, whose lives criss-cross as they struggle to find true love and bespoke negligees.
The present-day Wally Winthrop (played with bovine vapidity by Abbie Cornish) is an elite New York wife unhappily married to an angry psychiatrist (is there another kind?). We meet Wally as she indulges in a growing obsession with the late Duchess of Windsor, whose belongings are on exhibition and about to be auctioned by Sotheby’s. The original Wallis Simpson (played with incandescent aplomb by Andrea Riseborough) was one of the great femmes fatales of modern history, a twice-divorced American who so besotted the petulant Duke of Windsor (Edward, hence “W.E.” for Wallis/Edward, played by James D’Arcy) that he gave up the crown of England to spend his life with her. In Riseborough’s spirited hands, Simpson is believably seductive enough to have overturned the throne, a mesmerizing tease of dark hair, white skin and scarlet lips. Too bad the present-day Wally hasn’t one iota of allure.
As many baby boomers and their mothers will recall, Wallis Simpson was considered the most stylish woman in the world, her every bracelet, hat, necklace, gown and suit the envy of shopgirls and empresses the world over. Those gowns and accessories have been brilliantly recreated for the film by Santa Cruz-reared costumer Arianne Phillips, longtime stylist for Madonna (and Oscar nominee for Best Costume this year), and worn with confidence by the elegant Riseborough. Madonna’s eye for visually arresting detail serves her well. W.E. might easily be mistaken for one extended Prada commercial. If you can survive endless hand-held tracking shots and music straight from daytime soaps, you’ll be treated to a letter-perfect re-creation of the private lives of royalty—replete with silver, servants, yachts and wild parties. If you live for fashion, do not miss this film.
However, if you require something like plot, intrigue, drama, even character development, there’s always the Weather Channel. In present-day Manhattan, the neglected but well-heeled wife hangs around the Windsor exhibition, where a Russian hottie security guard (Oscar Isaac) picks up on her melancholy, among other things. He befriends her, takes care of her when called to, and yes, you know what ultimately happens. But in the interim, the two Wallises somehow meet in cinematic dream space and trade girl talk. The Duchess confides how difficult her life really was, and somehow that gives the modern Wally hope for her own life.
Why in the world would a self-made cultural icon like Madonna reduce a woman’s true salvation to, gulp, the love of a good man? Wish fulfillment, perhaps, on the part of a restless superstar who has both more, and less, in common with Wallis Simpson than she thinks.
W.E.
R; 118 min.
At the Nickelodeon and Aptos Theater
