Shanghai in the 1920s. American Wallis Simpson leaves her violent serviceman husband and winds up in England, married for a second time to a businessman and mixing in the highest social circles when she first meets the future King Edward VIII.
New York in the 1980s. Wally Winthrop, the young wife of a high society shrink develops an obsession with Wallis Simpson – and the intensity of her romance with King Edward VIII – and escapes from her unfulfilling life with daily visits to the auction house where the Duchess of Windsor’s belongings are about to be sold.
After outings at the Venice, Toronto and London Film Festivals, Madonna’s W.E., a lavish new dramatisation of ‘the romance of the century’ arrives with critical opinion divided. Some have heaped praise on the handsome and very cinematic nature of this re-telling of the story, while others have seen it as triumph of style over substance, unable to forgive the way the film plays fast and loose with history.
As ever, the truth lies somewhere in between. It’s certainly the case that W.E. channels favourite scenes from any number of masterworks of modern cinema and at times feels like an exercise in scene stealing. But it’s equally possible to see the film as a bold attempt to move away from the sober aesthetics of the conventional heritage drama and bring modernity (and new audiences) to a well-documented story. It’s as if, on his abdication, the Duke of Windsor walked out of The King’s Speech and into the helter-skelter of a contemporary pop video.
