London Film Fest 2011 Day 13 - W.E.

It would be all too easy to write off W.E.  - a biopic of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII - as a self-financed vanity project from Madonna, a highly successful musician who has serially failed to translate that success to celluloid.  However, if one is able to forget who has directed the film, and review it on its own merits, a far more nuanced and fair-minded discussion can ensue.  Because, much to my surprise, W.E. is a beautifully photographed, acted, and directed film, let down only by the concept of intertwining the story we all care about with the story of a modern bored housewife called Wally Winthrop.  This unnecessary, unenlightening contemporary drama frustrates us - it comes off as an hour long PR stunt for Sotheby's New York - and takes precious time away from Andrea Riseborough's charismatic and sympathetic portrayal of Wallace Simpson.  If this movie had just had the courage to stick to the source material, it could've been truly great.

The contemporary story is bland and predictable.  Abbie Cornish plays the bored and abused houswife of a financially successful but cheating husband.  She obsessively visits an exhibition of Wallace Simpson's personal artefacts, envisioning Wallace's life and desperate to know what it feels like to be loved that much.  It is a "way in" to the story that is completely unnecessary and not helped by a completely cliched "rich woman meets poor man with a soul" love story between Wally and the security guard Evgeni (Oscar Isaac).  

The Wallace Simpson-King Edward story is told in a far more balanced and sympathetic manner than most retellings.  Madonna briefly and deftly essays her unhappy first marriage in Shanghai, with a powerful bathroom scene.  Wallace (Riseborough) then turns up in London, breaks into the royal circle, and we see her evident intelligence and wit win over the less impressive but again, sympathetically portrayed, King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy).  Once again, with elegance and economy, Madonna shows Wallace's talents for throwing parties, refusing to pander to the King - her complete understanding of her own limitations and attractions - and her foreboding at the life she would lead post-abdication.  She does not come across as grasping or materialistic but as a vibrant woman hoist by her love affair -  a truly tragic tale. These scenes beautifully portray her dilemma, and give the low budget of the film, are stunningly well produced.  The costumes, hair, the very look of that era is brilliantly captured, and DP Hagen Bogdanski (THE YOUNG VICTORIA, THE LIVES OF OTHERS) captures the crisp light of the Cote d'Azur as well as the dank, claustrophobic interiors of the royal palaces.  In the supporting roles, Natalie Dormer is particularly waspish as the jealous and manipulative future Queen Mother. I wanted to spend far more time in this story, and particularly to know more about Wallace's life post-abdication.  But sadly, that was not to be.

Andrea Riseborough (Wallis Simpson); Madonna (Writer-Director) and 
James D'Arcy (King Edward VIII)at the UK premiere of W.E. 
at the BFI London Film Festival 2011.

W.E. played Venice, Toronto, Hollywood (where Andrea Riseborough won the Spotlight Award) and London 2011. It will be released in the US on December 9th; in the Netherlands on December 22nd; in the UK on January 20th and in Sweden on March 16th.

THE YOUNG VICTORIA - all this useless beauty

THE YOUNG VICTORIA is a luscious-looking film in which two rather beautiful, warm-hearted people - Queen Victoria and the future Prince Albert - meet and almost instantly realise that they will be in love for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, this happens in the first thirty minutes of the movie, and isn't enough to hold our attention for the next seventy minutes. So a lot of time is spent watching a cast of supporting characters harrumph about the lavish sets kicking over pot plants and shout like sulky teenagers* - everyone from the then Princess Victoria's uncle, the King (Jim Broadbent), to her mother's controlling adviser (Mark Strong) to Queen Victoria's slipper adviser, Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany). Poor screenwriter Julian Fellowes even resorts to throwing in a rather ridiculous act of heroism to add to the stakes, but this is all stuff and nonsense. He knows it and we know it. The simple facts are these: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert fell in love and were deeply devoted to each other, spawning nine children who went on to rule Europe. It's enough to warm the cockles of your heart, but not enough to fill a feature film. All the beauty, all the perfectly serviceable performances, are thus rather wasted. Although I must say that I was rather impressed by Rupert Friend for the first time.

(*Maybe not coincidentally, as this was a major component of director Jean-Luc Vallee's previous film, CRAZY.)

THE YOUNG VICTORIA is on release in the UK. It opens in Israel on April 2nd; in the Netherlands on April 23rd; in Russia on April 30th; in Belgium on May 6th; and in Norway on September 11th.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS/DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN - The Good German

THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a technically accomplished, well-acted thriller set in the Communist East Germany of the early 1980s. It is a world where the avowed mission of the state is, simply, to know everything, and where the ability of an artist to perform is governed by his or her willingness to please the State and its high-ranking officials. In this world, an oleaginous Minister is eager to bed a famous actress called Christa. In order to clear away her lover - a dramatist and loyal Party man called Georg - the Minister orders a 24 hour surveillance operation that will obligingly turn up something incriminating.

The set-up is dealt with quickly. As is the redemption of a loyal Stasi spy named Wiesler who is running the investigation. We are meant to believe that a man so imbued with the Party line - whose life is enmeshed in the State - would become the stalked couple's protector upon hearing a piece of classical music. In short, that good art can change a man - and that each man has the innate capacity to change for the better. After that event - marked by a melodramatic tear trickling down Wiesler's cheek around forty-five minutes into this two and half hour film, the movie is all police procedural with a little how-dunnit thrown in to string out the run-time into a mawkish 1990s reunion.

Some critics have knocked the writer-director for training his eye on the one Good Stasi operative, so giving a misleading impression of the horrors of the DDR. In their eyes, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is like the SCHINDLER'S LIST of post-war German film. Like them, my sensibility errs toward the grim majority case rather than to the optimistic exception. Nonetheless, an artist is free to tell the story he chooses - we can only judge him on the results. And, from an early conversation in the film, I conclude that the director specifically wants to make the point that while the Communist functionaries are cynical and believe in humanity's greed, the artists believe in humanity's capacity for good and for change and they ultimately triumph. The director of this film is then, by his hand, charged with making us believe this to be true.

Sadly, I found the prompts for Wiesler's change of heart rather glib. So that, despite an outstanding score, great acting and visual style, THE LIVES OF OTHERS was, for me, over-long and pat.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS played Toronto and London 2006, where it won the Satyajit Ray Award for best debut feature. This was presented to the director by Sir Richard Attenborough earlier tonight. The movie also won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, 2006. The film was released in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden last year. It opened in the Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Portugal, the US, Japan, Israel, Spain, the Netherlands, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Mexico, Slovakia and South Korea earlier this year. It is currently showing in Australia, Slovenia and Italy and opens on the UK on April 13th. It opens in Argentina on April 19th and in Iceland on May 4th 2007.

*Plot spoiler - moreover, why didn't the editor of Spiegel simply smuggle the typewriter out with him after the article had been written. It would have been risky, sure, but not more so than smuggling it in and infinitely less risky than leaving it in Dreyman's apartment.