Feminine perspectives | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

MOVIE REVIEWS

In her smoky evocation of lost love, vintage romance and bewitching cello music, Madonna, at the helm of W.E., channelled Wong Kar-wai of the early millennium, doing that visual serenade of beautiful, distressing women who're in the mood for love. Wong sculpted melancholia out of gorgeous haze; Madonna's swirl of luxury and grainy jump-cuts merely drift, and then land somewhat in emptiness. Re-telling the story of "the greatest romance of the century" _ the one between Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson _ the Material Girl also gives us a story of a wife who's in the desperate mood for pregnancy. So much so that the effort crosses over from beautiful and tender to obsessive and self-sabotaging.

W.E. Starring Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D’Arcy and Oscar Isaac. Directed by Madonna.

Still, the best thing about W.E. is its dreamy glamour. Madonna milks every frill, every starched pleat, every pre-World War II splendour, and serves it up as a saturated fantasy for us to get drunk on. There are two parallel stories from two different eras. In present-day Manhattan, Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) endures a loveless, sexless, childless marriage and seeks refuge in the pre-auction show of glittering memorabilia that once belonged to Wallis Simpson and Prince Edward. That so-called "romance of the century" between W and E _ the throne-rocking infatuation that prompted the crown prince of England to abdicate and go away with the American widow from Baltimore many years his senior _ is the film's second story, and it carries more emotional weight mainly because of Andrea Riseborough's turn as Wally.