BRIT ACTORS CHANNEL DOOMED ROYAL COUPLE IN “W.E.”

British talents James D'Arcy (“Master and Commander”) and Andrea Riseborough (“Never Let Me Go”) play the ill-fated Duke and Duchess of Windsor in The Weinstein Company's elegant romantic drama “W.E.,” Madonna's Oscar-nominated film about one of the greatest real love stories of all time. The will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma).

             “W.E.” starts in the year 1998, when Manhattan is abuzz with anticipation about the upcoming auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But the auction is far more than a diversion for Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a New Yorker trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Transfixed by the exquisite artifacts of the Windsors' lives, Wally becomes obsessed with the love story of Wallis Simpson (Riseborough), the chic, charismatic American who captured the heart of King Edward VIII (D'Arcy). As she learns more about the sacrifices Wallis made in choosing to be with Edward, Wally finds the courage to follow her own heart and create her own happiness.

 

             Finding the right actress to play Wallis Simpson was essential to the telling of the story. Director Madonna needed someone who was able to embody Wallis’s feisty “pep,” but with a hint of fragility. The acclaimed British actress Andrea Riseborough was eventually cast in the role of Wallis Simpson. She was fresh from her critically acclaimed performance as the young Margaret Thatcher in the BBC film “The Long Walk to Finchley,” which earned her a Television BAFTA nomination. 

             Recalls Madonna, “Casting Wallis Simpson was almost impossible. She was very particular, and I was looking for a certain quality – something fragile, something androgynous and yet still feminine in a really old-fashioned way – plus this nervous, birdlike energy. When Andrea walked into the room, I knew immediately she was the one. It was the way she wore her dress, the length of her neck, the expressiveness of her hands. I had seen her play Margaret Thatcher and I had seen her in a period piece as well, “The Devil's Whore” and I saw that she transformed herself in each character.”

             For her part, Riseborough was drawn to “W.E.” after hearing two friends talk about it in New York. “They were meeting with Madonna to talk about being involved, so this was my first inkling that it was happening,” she says. “When I first read the script, I found the dual reality interesting. Seeing a historical figure through the eyes of a modern-day woman and then on the flip side being able to relate to a woman in the late 1930s who was about to potentially become a Queen, I thought this was very interesting.”

             Madonna's evident passion for the project was also a lure, Riseborough explains. “I really wanted to play Wallis with Madonna directing because she has such an affinity with Wallis. Madonna has read every publication about her, and I think she understands her in a very specific way in relation to her own life, but that is not something I have talked about with her. I just knew from the first moment that we met and talked about Wallis that she needed to tell the story.”

             After joining the cast, Riseborough’s preparation period began with researching her role and the period. Riseborough found the private letters between Wallis and Edward particularly illuminating. “The letters were just fascinating. They go all the way up to and past the abdication, so you can really get a full picture,” the actress remarks. “Wallis and Edward had a really interesting language they used with one another, like a private code.”

Photo courtesy of Weinstein Company

             British actor James D’Arcy was cast in the role of the Duke of Windsor, and as with the other actors, found Madonna’s knowledge of Wallis and Edward to be highly impressive. “She had clearly done mountains of research, had written the script, and what became immediately obvious was that she’d been working on this for a long time,” D’Arcy remembers. “She had read more or less everything there was to read about Edward and Mrs. Simpson.” 

             The interwoven story between the modern-day and the 1930s also appealed to the actor “What I liked about the script was that the period flashbacks were very real, very honest and very immediate. Sometimes when I watch period dramas, I feel quite a distance from them, that these are not real people. I hope that what you get with this film is you really believe that these are real people.”

W.E.

Story: Wally is a battered wife who found happiness from her obsession with the the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Review: The story was done like an art film. You will not see any Hollywood influence in its film making. The production didn't cast a familiar celebrity but you may recall Abbie Cornish from Sucker Punch.

This is not Madonna's first time to direct. She already did a commercial and another film. I haven't got the chance to see her work but I was really impressed with this movie's story telling. There are two settings that is separated by time. One is a royal scandal from Britain's history and a fictional story of Wally Warthrop(Abbie Cornish) except for the 1998 auction of the artifacts belonging to the Duke and Duchess. Madonna makes bridge between  between these two worlds. As if the two people separated by time, were in a parallel situation and as if they were both connected.

 I heard that Madonna's past movies she directed were given bad reviews but W.E. was better than what I expected. It was sensual but with it was not explicit. This is also a type of movie a Pinoy can appreciate. Coincidentally, it has a similarity with a local movie that is also shown this week. This movie is only exclusive for MyCinema at Ayala Cinemas.

Sucker Punch's Abbie Cornish in W.E.

Catapulted to fame with a breakthrough performance in the blockbuster “Sucker Punch,” Abbie Cornish now stars in The Weinstein Company's elegant romantic drama “W.E.,” Madonna's vision of one of the most greatest real love stories of all time. The will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma) starting Sept. 12.

Photo courtesy of Weinstein Company

             “W.E.” starts in the year 1998, when Manhattan is abuzz with anticipation about the upcoming auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But the auction is far more than a diversion for Wally Winthrop (Cornish), a New Yorker trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Transfixed by the exquisite artifacts of the Windsors' lives, Wally becomes obsessed with the love story of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), the chic, charismatic American who captured the heart of King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy). As she learns more about the sacrifices Wallis made in choosing to be with Edward, Wally finds the courage to follow her own heart and create her own happiness.

 

             The auction became a key narrative device in “W.E.” as Wally, visiting the auction in a bid to understand more about what she thinks is the greatest love story of the 20th Century, “meets” Wallis and learns about the realities of her life. Through various objects – some everyday (a martini shaker, linen tablecloths), some precious (a Cartier bracelet) – Wallis’s life unfolds before Wally’s eyes. Each item tells a story, and it is through Wally’s handling of each item that we are able to go back and forth in time and learn about Wallis.

             Madonna says, “Wally starts off her journey, longing for a loving relationship, because she is deeply unhappy. It was important for me to create a character who was trapped in a relationship that was not rooted in love and to have her pining for the idea of romantic love.”

             The casting of Wally required an actress with the sensitivity to convey a myriad of different emotions alongside Wally’s vulnerability. Says Madonna, “Wally doesn’t really have a voice; she lives vicariously through objects and through the Duchess. There is a quietness about her and that is why I wanted to cast Abbie. She has a strength about her as an actress when she doesn’t say anything. There is a weight and a sadness in that silence.”

             Wally’s obsession leads her to question her own unhappy marriage with William Winthrop (Richard Coyle) and allows her to open her heart to a new romance with Evgeni (Oscar Isaac). Madonna comments, “The relationship between Evgeni and Wally is about to begin at the end of the film. We don’t know what compromises they will make, but one thing Wally knows as a result of her journey is that there is no such thing as perfect love, and we all have to make compromises to make a relationship work.”

             Cornish explains her passion for the role: “I felt a strong connection to Wally and to her journey. I thought the parallel connection story with Wallis, mixing fiction with non-fiction was really interesting. The subject matter excited me. When I read the script, Wally bounced off the page and got under my skin. She was so full. And then there was the creative team. The idea of making a film with Madonna was exciting. I was interested to see what she would do with this film and what it would be like to collaborate with her”.

             When Cornish was preparing for her role, Madonna carefully ensured she had the right research material to study. “Madonna and I had a lot of exchanges particularly on email, about who Wally was, what the film is about, what it means to make it and how to access her. She provided a lot of research material and sent me a whole bunch of books on Wallis, her autobiography, and as my character is into art, she sent me books on Lee Miller, Tamara de Lempicka, Frida Kahlo and just inundated me with all this information and said, ‘Here’s Wally, she’s in here, read this.’" Madonna also forwarded Cornish the following passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night:

             “She had somehow given over the thinking to him and in his absences her every action seemed automatically governed by what he would like. So that now she felt inadequate to match her intentions against his. Yet think she must, she knew at last the number of the dreadful door of fantasy. The threshold to the escape that was no escape. She knew that the greatest sin now and for the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learnt it. Either you think, or else others have to think for you, and take the power from you. Pervert and discipline your natural tastes. Civilize and sterilize you.”

             Fitzgerald’s description gave Cornish further insight into Wally’s inner life, Cornish affirms. “It summed up Wally’s journey, and in particular, what she’s going through in her marriage.”

MADONNA'S DIRECTORIAL DEBUT “W.E.” OPENS SOON IN MANILA

With The Weinstein Company’s romantic drama “W.E.,” Madonna, one of the world's most famous women, tries to clean up the stained image of another famous American, Wallis Simpson — "that woman" for whom King Edward VIII gave up his throne in 1936, causing a crisis unprecedented in British history.

Photo Courtesy of Weinstein Company

             Simpson has been dead for nearly 26 years; her ex-king husband, the Duke of Windsor, has been gone for nearly 40. Neither had a good end but their story lives on as one of the most reproduced of royal sagas on stage and screen for most of the 20th century.

             Now, 75 years after the abdication crisis, Madonna's movie, “W.E.” helps shift the image of Simpson from the mannish-but-chic party crasher at the palace to a more ambivalent figure, by turns despised, traduced, envied and pitied even by her critics.

“W.E.” starts in the year 1998, when Manhattan is abuzz with anticipation about the upcoming auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But the auction is far more than a diversion for Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a transplanted Southerner trapped in an unhappy and abusive marriage. Transfixed by the exquisite artifacts of the Windsors' lives, Wally becomes obsessed with the love story of Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), the chic, charismatic American who captured the heart of King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy). As she learns more about the sacrifices Wallis made in choosing to be with Edward, Wally finds the courage to follow her own heart and create her own happiness.

Writer and director Madonna had been developing the idea for “W.E.” for many years. She had a longstanding fascination with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, yet she was not interested in making a conventional biopic. She sought instead to capture the essence of their romance and convey her interpretation of one of the greatest love stories of the 20th Century. She says, "Truth is subjective. Everything I have to say about the Duke and Duchess is the conclusion I came to after all my research. I wanted to present a more well-rounded portrayal of Wallis than was commonly known. I created the Wally character because the movie needed a point of view. Wally goes on a journey thinking this is the greatest love story only to realize that it wasn't such a perfect love and that both of them made huge sacrifices. Strangely enough, Wallis seemed to make more of a sacrifice than Edward did."

             Madonna comments, “I couldn’t get my mind off the fact that a man gave up the throne for a woman. From my perspective, men since the beginning of time have fought to get on the throne. Men are power-seeking animals, so why would this man run away from power? Why would he give it up? What drove him to do that? If it was for a woman and it was for love, what did this woman have that would inspire him to make such a great sacrifice? I wanted to know more about her.”

Fascinated by this woman and this powerful love story, Madonna spent two years writing her script, and although “W.E.” is, in part, a fictionalized story, she also spent this time heavily researching the project. She devoured every book published on Wallis and Edward, watched every documentary and broadcast available and interviewed countless people who knew Wallis and Edward.

During her research, two elements became particularly important. Wallis and Edward wrote to each other constantly throughout their relationship, sometimes even when staying in the same house. These letters are used throughout the film and even provide the title “W.E.” due to the way they would sign off their letters with their initials. “I found the letters very insightful because I think people reveal a lot about themselves in a letter. Things you don’t get from a book – the way they speak to each other, the nicknames they gave each other,” concludes Madonna.

(“W.E.” will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas – Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma – starting Sept. 12.)