An average movie

For many years, Madonna had a rather pathetic acting career, her last lead role was almost 20 years ago in the godawful ‘Swept Away’ and it seems that she has pretty much retired. However, since then, she did shoot 2 movies very discretly so I was actually a little bit curious to see her directing skills (or lack of it). Well, eventually, even if the damned thing was rather misguided, at least, it was quite ambitious and I don’t think it was really so bad at all. Indeed, there was definitely some potential in focusing on the relationship between Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. However, it was a huge gamble to try to transform the biggest scandal of the 20th century into, supposedly, one of the greatest love stories and, to be honest, it was never really convincing. Indeed, Madonna spent too much time and effort to make sure that everything looked fine (it did) but not enough on the characters. Also, for some reason, it was combined with a fictional character who was obsessing with this couple but the link between these 2 stories was just too thin and even though Abbie Cornish was as usual extremely lovely, her romantic life was just too generic, predictable and rather boring. In fact, even her romance with Oscar Isaac didn’t really work because, in my opinion, the guy pretty much acted like a creepy stalker. Anyway, eventually, the biggest mistake made by Madonna was to assume that the viewers would automatically share her fascination with this notorious couple but, in spite of its flaws, I still think this movie is worth a look.