So… a trailer has finally come out for Madonna’s Wallis Simpson-Prince Edward film, W.E. The best thing I can say about it is that it looks like an absolutely beautiful mess. Like, I’ll probably see it as a rental just for the costumes and James D’Arcy, who I already love, and who is playing Edward (the Prince of Wales, then the King, then the Duke of Windsor). I’m also interested in seeing what Andrea Risebourough does with the Wallis role – my opinion of it so far is that Andrea is already much too pretty and too vulnerable to play Wallis. Here’s the trailer:
Do you see what falls flat? Do you see where the mess is? It’s with the “modern” storyline, the stuff with Abbie Cornish. I don’t care about any of that, just because it seems so cliché and eye-roll-inducing. “Oh, I wish a man would love ME as much as Edward loved Wallis, they were so romantic and true and that’s why I’m leaving my husband to bone some random, accented beefcake!” Shut up.
This is why I hate historical revisionism – the whole point of studying history is to learn from previous generations mistakes and to seek inspiration from WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. So instead of a modern character learning that Wallis and Edward were Nazi sympathizers with a parasitic relationship, we have a modern character twisting herself in knots over an impossible (and false) love story. Speaking of, the history of the whole Wallis-Edward stuff is already romanticized and falsified to a ridiculous degree from what I can see. That being said, I wish Madge had been brave enough to JUST do the film about her idea of Wallis and Edward, and not even mess around with the modern storyline.
Photos courtesy of Vanity Fair’s slideshow and WENN.
After having watched the trailer, I feel like I have watched the whole movie. No more need to see it.
The mess is Madonna’s face.
The cinematography looks gorgeous. I will see it for that and the movie can’t be any worse than all the crap I’ve seen in the past two years called movies.
Madonna looked so much younger before going crazy with too many fillers. Bad photo above. But she looked pretty at Cannes nut looked her age. When she had a slimmer face with minimal fillers she looked fresh and younger. Jen Aniston put minimal fillers in het face during Marley and Me and she looked good.
A fat face does not bring back youth, celebs. It just makes you look heavier when you’re not.
I love that chevron dress (in the first picture)!
I will watch this just to see how pretty it is. Not everything needs to be deep. Or accurate. We should tell Madonna that.
it looks so boring and clichéed.
This coming from a woman that stimulated masterbation live in concert and she has expections of being takin’ seriously…artisically…now?
It looks like a Lifetime movie to me.
I respect this woman because she has succeed with a ton of determination and minimal talent. Unfortunately, she cannot pull off films-acting, directing or producing.
you’re right on the money, kaiser. the ‘tear’ image in the trailer was enough for me…will pass on this cliche filled rewrite of history.
stylish looking, though. even if it does resemble the feel of ‘a single man’ by tom ford just a little too much.
It’s a Hallmark card whitewash of a relationship that was basically one-sided. Wallis Simpson was a twice divorced, scheming social-climber with her eyes set on the crown. When Edward wanted to abdicate to marry her she insisted that he not give up the crown and that she would capitulate to the wishes of the royal family and parliament and not marry him. Once he did abdicate she realized she’d painted herself into a corner and would have to marry him or bring down the wrath of the British empire and the world on her skinny ass. She treated him horribly during their married life, even as he continued to worship her. She was a mean, vile, penny-pinching harpie who made her Faustian deal with the devil and lost. Madonna should have taken some pointers from the 1980 production Edward & Mrs. Simpson with Edward Fox and Cynthia Harris, which portrayed their relationship up until his abdication with unnerving accuracy.
Boring, clichéd and trying way too hard to be artsy like posters above said it belongs on Lifetime or Hallmark.
@Jaded
Couldn’t have put it better myself. Except to add in the bit about them being actual Nazi sympathizers, who hobnobbed with Hitler in 1937 and had to be shipped off to the Bahamas during World War 2 to keep them from getting into mischief. While in the Bahamas Wallis took frequent trips to the US to shop up a storm when she wasn’t writing racist complaints about the local population.
Madonna’s version of their relationship bears little resemblance to what has been documented by historians and researchers. But then again I don’t think Madonna cares – her arrogance would rival that of Wallis. No wonder she likes her.
No person is all good or all bad. Wallis and Edward were very complicated individuals and by all accounts their relationship was extremely layered, with different facets shown to everyone who observed them.
It would have been a striking study in character if Madonna had simply focused on those two, and their complicated relationship with each other, and with the outside world.
Is it just me or does this movie look like an extended music video?
I just cant get past Madonna’s face – what has she done – she is almost non recognizable! And her hairdo is awful.
The few articles I have read about the film have really panned it.
And I totally agree with your comments about historical revisionism. I read many many many historical novels every year and I get very upset (and wont read the author again) if I discovered myself or find out from another source that they changed the real facts of history to suit the plot/characters of their story. History is what it is and if you are going to tell history keep it true to the facts and to the customs/thinking of the people at that particular time and place.
I would totally jump Oscar isaac. Check him out in the last pic, it is like he is staring directly at your soul…
Madge needs to get it through her head that she has limited, actually next to no ability, for film work -acting, directing, anything. When will she get this?
If I was an actress like Abbie Cornish, I wouldn’t take on a Madonna film if I want my career to progress.
The visuals alone indicate that this vehicle is something that Madonna wished she could be in [but is too old for].
It’s a vanity project that’ll go nowhere, and don’t get me started on the historical revisionism.
Wow. She is nasty looking. Never cared for her. I am a wee big younger than her so I’ve experienced her for many years. I can’t even look at pictures of her. I wish she would vanish.
@Jaded, @ Summer – you’re both completely right. It’s a damn good thing he DID abdicate – he would have been a total disaster as king, esp. during wartime, with his known Nazi predilections. For a more accurate image of Edward and Wallis, check out their portrayal in “the King’s Speech” – he, weak, selfish, flippant, with no moral centre; she, brittle, selfish, scheming, ambitious and a bitch. Madonna shouldn’t have wasted her – and her actors’/actresses’ – time.
Ludicrous, empty-headed whitewash of important historical facts. Also, a romanticization of two pretty horrible people: Wallis shagged her way to the top through increasingly rich/powerful men, and Edward had affairs with multiple married women (they had lower commitment expectations). Oh, and Wallis ‘stole’ Edward from her friend, Edwards then-mistress, while she was out of town.
Politically: “The final FBI report, recently released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, running to 227 pages, reveals that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor harboured pro-Nazi sympathies and that Edward was earmarked by Hitler as a potential puppet king if Hitler defeated Britain. … British military intelligence reports and, crucially, the sensational diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, the Duke’s private secretary … prove that Edward VIII’s sympathies lay squarely with Hitler’s regime. … Edward and his wife were warmly welcomed by Hitler in Germany and thereafter Edward passed on top secret Allied information to the enemy.”
You can watch the whole documentary on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXamWEGhBgA
Cinematographer Hagden Bogdanski, who is actually to be credited with the gorgeousness of the W.E. visuals, also worked on Young Victoria.
The trailer reminds me of an old “Obsession” cologne/perfume commercial. Very hokey.
Wow, Wallis and Edward are ridiculously good looking in this movie. The historical inaccuracy of it all is annoying, it seems like too much of a hollywood fairytale. However, I’ll admit the costumes and sets look gorgeous and I’ll be seeing this. After I saw Bright Star I became a huge Abbie Cornish fan, she was amazing in that.
I just watched the trailer again and am so glad my pretend boyfriend Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t end up playing Edward. I think it’s going to be a mess.
I imagine it’s horrid but I can’t not see it. I do love Andrea Riseborough, and even though she’s much more conventionally pretty than Wallis here, she’s usually devastating, so they’ve done a pretty remarkable job of making her look like an angular basement dweller.
I wouldn’t be precious about the history but for two things: Madonna is pitching it as truth, and this film will probably be the most that 95% of the population ever learn about these two. And I wonder if she knows about the letters that were discovered a few months back – see a sum-up here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/8713438/Wallis-Simpsons-secret-letters-to-her-ex-husband.html . So much for the fairy tale at the centre of this film: even bracketing its borderline criminal revisionism, it seems the grand love affair may be yet another fiction.
I’m of nine minds where Wallis Simpson is concerned, but I’ll say this much: there is nothing more emotionally destructive than being pathologically worshipped by someone you don’t love. As far as that’s concerned, she’s got my sympathy.
In the middle of the trailer you hear part of the soundtrack of ”Le Fabuleux Destin Amélie Poulain”.Now THAT was a great movie!
This one, well, not so much.
Want to do a ”true” love story,why not do one about Paul Newman and his wife,George Burns and Gracie,Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.And the list goes on!
The trailer makes the movie look like a spoof — I actually snickered while watching it. I think I’ll pass.
It’s even worse than i thought in terms of being an overworked romantic novel and it has little throw backs to scenes from her videos. how cute *barf*
Not going to pay good money to see Madonna’s whitewash of history. Nope. When it finally turns up on late night cable, then maybe. And that’s only for the fashion/period costumes.
@sapphire #10: Sure, Madonna hustled like nobody’s business. Is that really to be respected, considering she slept with producers, DJs, and songwriters – anyone who could help her in the music industry? Let’s not forget she has also repeatedly stolen the ideas of other artists to pass off as her own. Beyonce was certainly not the first to habitually do this.
Talented former collaborator Patrick Leonard, who wrote many of Madonna’s early hits, like Live To Tell and Like A Prayer, said that Madonna was only interested in finding more ways of promoting herself and barely participated in the songwriting process.
Madonna once said losing her virginity was “a career move”. She actually offered to sleep with the female chief of production at Orion Pictures in order to get cast in “Desperately Seeking Susan”. The female producer, who was the one who reported this incident, was straight, married, and (of course) turned her down. Madonna got the part, anyway. I wonder if she made the same offer to others involved with that film, LOL!
I don’t doubt that many stars did unsavory things to get ahead in their careers. I’m sure they regret some of those things in hindsight. For Madonna, who never had much talent to begin with (besides shameless self-promotion and manufacturing controversy), it seems like no big deal for her. She’s respected by some as some kind of gifted businesswoman, but I don’t think dumping people when you’ve gotten all you can get out of them is admirable. I don’t think regularly sleeping around for favors to be some kind of impressive business acumen. I call that a form of prostitution.
Seriously, she must have watched “A Single Man” about 50 times before she made this movie.
Minty I am cosigning one thousand percent on this. I liked Madonna, enough to download her shit for free, but the bitch is a thief and a ho, just like Bey Bey (urban blogs love talking about Bey’s abortions and the obvious like that Jay was her first).
As for the Simpsons there was nothing romantic about what they did. A lot of elder English folk to this day remember their parents feeling what he did was turn his back on his duty because of cowardice. He didn’t want to be king, but even when he abdicated he was still able to enjoy the privileges of being “royal” with or without the title.
I think that’s why a lot of people have love for Queen Elizabeth because she comes from two people who were thrust involuntarily in a role neither necessarily wanted, but with all the legitimate reasons why they were happy at being second, they stepped up the plate and delivered.
Hi Victoria! Good point about Queen Elizabeth’s parents. They put their personal feelings aside and did their duty for England. I think Queen Elizabeth has worked very hard representing her country.
Regretfully, I admit that I bought into a lot of Madonna’s crap when I was a teen. She was clever, marketing herself as an empowered woman rebelling against the restrictive conventions of society. Of course, that was all an act. Teenagers are often attracted to symbols of rebellion. At that age, we are easily fooled by superficial style over substance. The majority of the press kissed her ass during the ’80s and early ’90s. She would not have gotten away with the things she did if the internet existed then.
@Minty she’s just a glorified prostitute at this point. add to that aged. glad some people have not forgotten where this glorified trollop came from.
So it’s basically just like Julie & Julia?
I was completely riveted by the trailer for Michael Fassbender’s Shame and didn’t want it to end. But, I was bored halfway through the trailer for W.E. What a bunch of revisionist tripe this film is going to be. In between all of the dancing and rolling around on the beach together, are we going to see some scenes of Wallis and Edward carousing with Hitler and the rest of their Nazi friends?
I think Andrea Riseborough is so beautiful. This fill looks hopelessly romaticized. I was complaining to my bf (who is very nonromantic) about WE after watching King’s Speech, about how he was weak, they were nazi sympathizers, etc, and he said “but he must have loved her so much, to give up the throne”. So I guess that is one way of looking at it. Maybe even deeply flawed people can have a great love story? Although Madonna seems to have ignored the deeply flawed part, which I think will keep the film from being anything buy eye candy.
Who the hell is doing Madonna’s hair, make-up and face-tweeking?
She kills herself to keep her body fit and then she f’s up her face and her whole look.
What is up with that skank hair she has been sporting for years now? A cottony mess yanked to the side and held with a ten cent bobby pin, frequently showing dark and grey roots and aging her even more.
C-mon, Madonna – you can do better!
I allways like madonna and I think she still gorgeous. She is natural and she doesn’t need anyone saying all this crapp about the movie. She did a great job envious people are everywhere… who cares about them? Loke like every body that is writing something here came from the same sanatorium… All said the same crapp… What is that? No good sense? what the reck with you envious people???
yeah everyone is jealous of your no talent trollop with a jacked fugly face and sagging skin. next…
to jayla + kiki
madonna is a legened! your so jelois!
you must be Kardasion goons!!!
But Madonna is messing with you once again because the story of Wallis Simpson-Prince Edward is being told through the eyes of a woman in crisis. It appears this woman is a domestic violence victim. So of course, as a matter of survival, she romanticizes everything in her life. “He almost killed me, but he had to because he loves me so much!” she thinks to herself. Therefore, it is not Madonna saying that the story of Wallis Simpson-Prince Edward is a perfect romance but instead using a corrupt romance to demonstrate the perception of an abused woman in crisis. It is powerful.