Madonna is undeniably a visual artist and you can see it all over the last movie she directed, W.E. (which I presume stands for Wallis Edward - Wallis being the American divorcee who stole Edward away from the throne of England).
If this movie were food, it would be a very delicious cake as everything in it looks sumptuous and elegant - and you can really see how painstakingly Madonna recreated the scenes to mirror the era they were in.
For her efforts, I remember this movie getting an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design - and deservedly so!
However, I think she forgot to tell the story.
I was only a baby when the Duke died, and Mama, whom I also watched the movie with, was still a baby when all this brouhaha happened.
So I thought it was important for Madonna to 'educate' today's audience on who these people were and why should we care about them!
To make it more confusing, she used two women, living in two different eras so in the first 20 minutes of the movie - we were a bit lost to find out who was who!
Anyhow, three of my favorite actors are in this movie - Andrea Riseborough, who I find to be very pretty, Abby Cornish - who I also think is very sexy - and Oscar Isaac - an actor who has this dangerous sensuality in him!
And they all do well in the movie - if only the script allowed them to tell more of the story that would actually matter to us. And I think the 'modern' component part of the movie seemed distracting - when Madonna could've just focused on Wallis and Edward, whose story alone needed at least 120 minutes of screen time.
Well, an interesting partner to this movie would be the Oscar-winning 'The King's Speech' since Colin Firth's character there is the younger, albeit, more intelligent brother to the Edward character in this movie.
Find out where their storylines intersect in both movies and see which one delivers more gravitas.
I will watch this movie, again and again, because I love the soundtrack and the sexual tension between Cornish and Isaac (which are unfortunately, not even part of the real W.E. story), and watching all these people in elegant clothes and speaking in clipped royal and upper-class English accents.
