W./E.

The most fascinating thing about W./E., sadly, is that it is one of the most famous women in the world of this era making a film about one of the most famous women of the world of another era. The film is more interesting psychologically than cinematically. That Madonna is drawn to the subject of Walls Warfield Simpson, who rocked the Western world in the mid-30s, shouldn't be a surprise. What is a surprise is that a woman who has an uncanny knack for reinventing herself would make such a dull movie.

W./E., short for Wallis and Edward, tells the story of the twice-divorced woman from Baltimore who brought down a king. Well, he brought himself down, abdicating rather than give her up. The story has been catnip to many over the years, as there are some underlying unanswered questions. Mainly, just what did he see in her that he would give up such power, and be a disappointment to so many? It has been pointed out, cruelly, that she wasn't a great beauty. Madonna's question is: what did she have?

The answer remains elusive. Though Andrea Riseborough gives a solid performance as Wallis, we know no more about her at the end of the film that we did at the beginning. We see her briefly in an abusive first marriage, in which she is beaten until miscarrying a pregnancy. Her second husband seems nice enough, but she somehow wrangles an invitation to meet the Prince of Wales, and steals him away from another married woman (how Wallis is in the upper echelon of society to be placed in such a position in the first place is unexplained). The prince is later a habitual visitor to the Warfield's, until she asks for a divorce, which Ernest Warfield quietly accedes to. But it is made clear by the Prime Minister that a marriage between the two would not be tolerated and, in what is widely regarded as a grand romantic gesture, Edward gives up the throne.

But I'm only describing half of the movie. In an ill-thought out decision, Madonna (who co-wrote the script as well as directed) contrasts Wallis' story with a contemporary woman, also named Wallis, who is obsessed with her namesake. Played by Abbie Cornish, she is in a troubled marriage to a philandering psychologist, and seeks solace by haunting the exhibition of Wallis and Edward's things before they are auctioned off at Sotheby's. Cornish makes friends with a security guard there, a  Russian emigre (Oscar Isaac), who slowly opens her up from the constant depression she's in. These scenes are intensely lugubrious, and add nothing to the story. There was plenty in the story of Wallis and Edward to make a feature, why add this dreck?

The other theme Madonna has established is that everyone says he gave up so much for her, but what did she give up? This is better expressed, and she realizes she will become the most despised woman in the world. At one point she writes that he freed himself from his prison, only to incarcerate her in his. Interestingly, in the wake of The King's Speech, which tells the story of Edward's brother and casts Edward in an unflattering light, here we get the opposite. The few scenes featuring George cast him as a stammering ninny, while pointedly showing his wife, the future Queen Mother, as a gossiping shrew (played by Natalie Dormer, who played another queen, Anne Boleyn, in The Tudors). Madonna goes to great lengths to show that the stories about Edward being a Nazi sympathizer weren't necessarily true, but she is unconvincing, given the historical evidence, and the possibility that Edward marrying Wallis was actually hoped for, as it would get him out of the way as the world was coming to a boil.

Though there are some interesting stylistic flourishes, such as having Wallis anachronistically dance to a Sex Pistols song, the movie is a slog. James D'Arcy, who plays Edward, is charmless. I liked the cinematography by Hagen Bogdanski and the music by Abel Korzeniowski, but otherwise there's not to much recommend here. The costumes, by Arianne Phillips, received an Oscar nomination, but frankly, when it comes to period costume dramas, I can't tell if one movie is better than another.