To clarify, I’m not Madonna hater, I’m really not (I’ve been known to unashamedly get into the groove as much as the next half-cut, last chance lunatic on the dance floor) but seriously, something must be done to ensure she never darkens a film set again. By the end of this unmitigated cack that culminates in Madonna’s dulcet tones crooning over the credits, I was all but foetal positioned and whimpering in the aisle: ‘please, please, take everything, just make it stop’.
Granted, the tale of Wallis Simpson and the whimsical Edward who gave up the throne for her is indeed a great love story. Indeed, had ol’ Madge focused solely on their legend, she might have salvaged this celluloid. But instead she runs the historical Wallis alongside a modern 1990s narrative concerning Wally (‘that affable robot?’ I hear you cry – alas, non) who is the long-suffering and disturbingly Wallis-obsessed wife of a violent psychiatrist. Their stories play out side by side with Wally falling for a Sotheby’s security guard ‘who’s also an intellectual’. Madonna proceeds to tritely point out the comparisons between the two women, including regular ghoulish, cringe-inducing moments whereby Wallis appears to Wally to dispense lipstick tips and the odd bit of relationship council. “I’ll always be here” creepily croons Wallis and one can’t help but recall Drop Dead Fred. The fact that Madonna thinks it’s appropriate for Wally to idolize Wallis is bizarre and almost insulting. She is effectively saying that all it takes for a girl to be content is a decent man and trips to Cannes. This is all fine and dandy but surely there are more inspirational role models in history? At the Sotheby’s auction of Wallis and Edward’s personal possessions, Wally decides she might be so feral as to bid (gasp). Ooh er, shopping in remonstration, how wildly modern and feminist of you. Jeepers, Emily Pankhurst will be churning in her grave.
To Andrea Riseborough’s credit, she gives an engaging performance as the sassy Wallis, but too many of the lines are so asinine that it’s almost laughable. An example being when Wallis has once again materialized to Wally who randomly asks her: ‘can we change our destiny?’ to which Wallis replies ‘you already know that’. Not only did this leave me clawing at my own face but there had never been any mention of destiny prior to that point and there never was again. What the deuce? It’s a botched mess of incoherent ramblings and is genuinely a bit like watching a student film, albeit with a huge budget. I feel one should send Abbie Cornish a note of sympathy and maybe a hanging plant as bless her, she flounders as the vacant Wally. She is clearly given so little direction that she seems to just totter in and out of scenes without any real purpose.
Aside from being half an hour too long, the hideous use of cheap captions leaves one fidgety and even more irritable. I know it’s Windsor Castle, you patronising poser. A plus point (there is one, people) is that it looks beautiful in terms of production design and costume and there are some lovely shots. However, these are rather ruined tonally as it reeks, perhaps unsurprisingly of the aggressive editing style of Guy Richie (who will undoubtedly be wryly smirking over his Punch Bowl lager when he sees this). The camera barely sits still and is a jarring amalgamation of jump cuts, crawling crane shots, quick pull-backs from cigarettes, extreme close ups of clinking martini glasses and one perplexingly slow-mo shot of Wallis walking down a corridor. It’s exhausting to watch and stylistically completely off, culminating in the utterly indiscriminate use of the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant as the track to which Wallis grabs an African pal and starts dancing on stage. In a cruel twist of irony, I fear that ‘pretty’ and ‘vacant’ are words that sum this film up perfectly.
