The movie plays like Julie &Julia and The Hours – shifting sometimes seamlessly, sometimes not – between the present (or in this case, the 1990s for some reason) and the 1930s. The connection seems contrived. The modern young woman, Wally (so named by her mother because she was obsessed with Wallis Simpson) is married to a successful mental health doctor who doesn’t want her to work. At 28, she is desperate to have a baby and is even trying IVF even though her distant and abusive husband is not particularly interested in having children. Until her husband William (Richard Coyle) forced her to “retire,” she worked at Sotheby’s, the famous auction house coincidentally displaying and then auctioning memorabilia and luxury items that belonged to the former king and Mrs. Simpson. She starts spending hours and hours examining the exhibition, fantasizing about Wallis Simpson, and even wearing her hair in a style like Simpson wore.
As Wally, Abby Cornish is lovely. She’s a good actress, but the role is just a bit too much for her. While spending so much time at Sotheby’s, Wally encounters a very handsome and kind security guard of Russian descent (the engaging Oscar Isaac, nailing his part and accent) who wants to save her from the get go. I wanted to know more about his back story, which the movie only glosses over.
Andrea Riseborough and James D’Arcy are perfect as Wallis and David. Riseborough captures what made Simpson so interesting. She wasn’t quite beautiful but she had a wit and a way of engaging people that allowed her to capture a room. Her voice, her posture, and her strong eye contact labeled her a woman to be reckoned with. D’Arcy plays the Peter Pan-esque monarch perfectly as well – they are quite a pair. He makes the audience understand how this connection is more than just love – that it’s an overwhelming desire to possess another human being. The movie then strives to tell the story from there.
Writer/director Madonna is making a point about how difficult it was for a woman of that time to climb the ladder of society. She’s done that before with Eva Peron. Simpson’s first husband didn’t get much screen time – he was an American captain who was physically abusive (and rendered her unable to have children in a hard to watch scene). Her second husband, also an American, but an ex-patriot, Ernest Simpson (Tony-nominated actor David Harbour) is much more decent, and it takes him a good long time to see that when the King wants your wife, he will have her. As for Wallis, she certainly did know how to keep company with important people – not bad for a girl from Pennsylvania.
Abbie Cornish and Oscar Isaac in W.E. © 2011 – The Weinstein Co.
One of the points Madonna seems to want to drive home (and that she achieves) is found in telling the story from Simpson’s point of view. When the affair happened, it was a scandal that rocked the world. The monarchy of England was not as forgiving as it is now and the King was not allowed to marry a twice-divorced woman and keep his throne – the people and his family would just not have it. So he made the ultimate sacrifice. But the movie presents that fate as one that didn’t bother David all that much – he wasn’t really suited for the serious job, especially with the nuisance of World War II and poor citizens in South Wales to deal with. But what about the sacrifice Simpson made? She and David were exiled and moved around like rich nomads. The world hated her. And she felt very bad that David left his family for her. Then, if we believe the movie, she felt suffocated by him at times, and ended up his nurse when he got sick (and died much earlier than she). So was she happy that she got her man? The movie leads us to believe that she made peace with it, but it was not the fairy-tale legend has it.
On the other side of time, Wally is a pretty, meek wife who for some reason puts up with a cad of a husband. It’s hard to watch her as the character being presented as parallel to Wallis Simpson, because the two can’t be compared. Wally has choices that Mrs. Simpson obviously never had. We don’t know the history of her family, but apparently the Wallis Simpson obsessed mother did not teach her daughter to be as strong as her namesake. And that doesn’t seem right at all for a movie directed by Madonna. Like Simpson, she goes from one man to another, but shouldn’t she have other options?
The scenes in England and France are lush and beautiful and loving care obviously went into making them look very authentic. The music is stunning – a detail that is not a surprise. A last bit of editing and saying “no” to a few directorial indulgences might’ve helped. Parts of it were glorious and parts were groan-worthy. There is a scene involving a long shot of the trunk of a tree that is trying way too hard to be symbolic. David’s brother’s stutter is cartoonish. Yes, we all know from The King’s Speech that Bertie stuttered, but this was heavy-handed. Parts of the movie were fantastic, but it felt disjointed going back and forth. Ultimately, W.E. is ambitious like Wallis herself, and fascinating but not perfect.
