<ref>{{cite news | last=Muir | first=Kate | title=Material girl makes Mills & Boon mash-up | work=[[The Times]] | date={{nowrap|September 2}}, 2011 }}</ref>

Material girl makes Mills & Boon mash-up
Times, The (London, England) - Friday, September 2, 2011
Author: Kate Muir

Madonna's first mainstream film as director, W.E ., is screamingly, inadvertently funny in parts. Beneath some exquisite fashion and glossy production, the drama feels like a mash-up of Mills & Boon and Homes & Gardens, with offcuts from the History Channel.

As the camera drools over Schiaparelli dresses and Cartier bracelets, there is the sense that one material girl is making a hagiography of another. Although the W.E . stands for Wallis and Edward, this is not a serious biopic of Mrs Simpson and Edward VIII. Instead it tells the intertwined stories of Wally Winthrop, an unhappily married New Yorker in 1998, and Mrs Simpson, with whom she becomes obsessed.

Andrea Riseborough, pictured left with co-star Abbie Cornish, turns in a superb, almost regal performance as Mrs Simpson, which saves the film from becoming a complete turkey. Cornish plays Wally, avidly researching Wallis's history and lurking at an auction preview of the couple's personal effects. Objects from the auction - a necklace, a pill box, a teacup - are used to make the transition from present to past.

By intercutting newsreel, Wally's fantasies and careful re-creations of the 1930s milieu surrounding the king, Madonna manages to create scenes which - perhaps to her surprise - had 'em rolling in the aisles at Venice. The choicest was a dream sequence in which Edward puts Benzedrine in the champagne glasses of his entourage, and soon a drugged-up Wallis dirty dances with a large, black tribesman to the Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant.

Costume drama at its finest.

Madonna has recruited some fine acting talent, including James D'Arcy as Edward, and they do their best with a script written by Madonna and Alek Keshishian. But someone should have explained about "show don't tell", as some lines jar like an educational broadcast. There is a curious visual naivety to this film. Whole scenes could easily be pop videos or perfume adverts. W.E . is about shiny surfaces, which is perhaps why Madonna was attracted to rehabilitating Mrs Simpson in the first place.