BEFORE: BRITFEST 2019, Day 4 - I wasn't all that lucky where my World War II movies are concerned - it's not like "Dunkirk", "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour" share any actors in common - so I've got to bounce through several centures of British history - but tonight I'm only jumping back a few years, from 1940 to 1930 or so. If all this feels a bit familiar, maybe it's because I did a chain on British kings and queens before, back in 2012, when I watched the two "Elizabeth" movies with Cate Blanchett, the 1971 "Mary, Queen of Scots", "The Lion in Winter", "The Madness of King George", "The Other Boleyn Girl", "Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown", and "The King's Speech". In some ways, I think this film will be the same story seen in "The King's Speech", only from another point of view.
There's no direct link between Queen Anne and the British royalty seen in this film, because Queen Anne died without any surviving children - so the throne went to her second cousin, George I. But after George 1 came his son, George II, then George II's grandson George III, then George III's son George IV, George IV's brother Wiliam IV, William IV's niece Victoria, Victoria's son Edward VII, Edward VII's son George V, then George V's son Edward VIII, who's the focus of this film. That's a lot of British monarchs between "The Favorite" and this movie. And then of course, Edward VIII abdicated in favor of his brother George VI, aka "Bertie", the father of the current Queen.
James D'Arcy carries over from "Dunkirk".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The King's Speech" (Movie #1,119)
THE PLOT: The affair between King Edward VII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson, and a contemporary romance between a married woman and a Russian security guard.
AFTER: So I guess everything DOES happen for a reason - like I tried to watch this film in February, but it didn't seem to fit in with my romance chain, because it didn't link to much there, but I had watched a bunch of Oscar Isaac films in January, but at that point I was still sort of saving it for February, plus my January was too full. Then I thought maybe I needed to save it for December to link to "Star Wars: Episode IX", but I found another way to get there - so that freed it up to be here, where it makes for a key link in the British chain. It ended up exactly where it was needed, I guess.
This is another film with a "split timeline" approach, here there are two timelines, the story of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, and a more modern one with a woman who becomes obsessed with their story, perhaps due to the unhappiness in her own marriage and an inability to conceive a child - turns out you need to have sex with your husband to make that happen, and between his job that keeps him busy at all hours (or possibly he's got some other kind of late-night activity going on), plus his lack of desire to have a child, plus his often surly disposition, motherhood doesn't seem to be in the cards for Wally (coincidentally, she was supposedly named after Wallis Simpson, thus the forced connection).
She supposedly gave up her job to be this psychiatrist's wife - they never really clarify what her job was, but she seems to know a lot of people at Sotheby's, so if I read between the lines, perhaps she was working there, or for some marketing firm connected with the famous auction house? It's all a bit unclear. But anyway, Sotheby's is preparing an auction of items from the Windsor estate, which includes a lot of clothing and furniture that once belonged to her namesake, and Edward VIII too. There's the famous desk that Edward sat at when he abdicated, dresses, gloves, and so on. Through her many visits to the museum-like display, flashbacks to the story-within-the-story are triggered - I guess that's one way to toggle between the timelines. (Eventually the characters meet after Wally buys some of Wallis' gloves, and somehow they meet in a park and have an imagined conversation.)
We're supposed to notice the similarities in the stories of the two women - and the big revelation here turns out to be that Wallis Simpson stayed with Edward in exile for 40 years, and felt trapped in that situation - Wally learns this from reading her private letters, which were NOT part of the auction, she goes out on her own to contact a collector to gain access. I guess up until this point we were supposed to have sympathy for Edward because he gave up being king, but the film wants us to regard Wallis as the tragic figure instead. (Why can't they BOTH be tragic characters?)
The beginning of the film was extremely confusing - I had to go back after and re-watch the beginning just to understand it. (I think they started the toggling between timelines before properly introducing any of the characters) It turns out that this was a scene set in Shanghai featuring Wallis Simpson and her FIRST husband, Winfield Spencer, who was abusive. After divorcing him, she married Ernest Simpson, and then left HIM for the future (temporary) king. So I'm sensing a pattern here, seems like she was always trying to trade up, but once you hit royalty, you sort of have to stop, right? Still, it seems like there was genuine affection there, but then why the feeling of being trapped? Even living in exile in France and being the Duchess of Windsor seems like a pretty good deal, I mean she probably didn't have to work for a living, and everything was on the U.K.'s dime, right?
But I get it, we're supposed to draw a connection, flimsy as it is, to Wally's more modern situation, where her husband is evasive about his activities, won't say where he's going at night, and when she goes ahead with her IVF treatments, he also becomes abusive. (To be fair, that really should have been a joint decision, and it seems like he was pretty clear about not wanting to have kids. It should be a two-way street, while women need to be in control of their own reproductive rights, that doesn't mean that their husbands don't get ANY say in the matter.) Just as Wallis was beginning a relationship with Edward while still married, Wally also starts dating a Russian security guard who works at Sotheby's, before officially breaking things off with her husband. At best, this is a complicated situation - like if he beats her, even once, I agree that she should walk out - but she also should have ended one relationship before starting another. The end doesn't really justify the means here.
The elephant in the room here is that this film was directed and financed by Madonna, who also happens to know a thing or two about being in some high-profile marriages that didn't pan out. Is it safe to assume that she herself was also obsessed with Wallis Simpson's story, or also felt some kind of kinship to her because of similar experiences? Was she also married to men who were abusive or neglectful? If so, my only advice would be to not marry similarly self-absorbed people, like Hollywood actors and directors (also, professions where people have to work around the clock, a lot of nights away from home, hmmm.....). And the point of both stories here might be that marriage isn't always what it's cracked up to be, whether you're famous or not.
Also starring Abbie Cornish (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Oscar Isaac (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Richard Coyle (last seen in "A Good Year"), David Harbour (last seen in "Black Mass"), James Fox (last seen in "Sexy Beast"), Judy Parfitt (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Haluk Bilginer (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Geoffrey Palmer (last seen in "Peter Pan"), Natalie Dormer (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Laurence Fox (last seen in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Douglas Reith (last seen in "Rush"), Katie McGrath (last seen in "Jurassic World"), Christina Chong (last seen in "Johnny English Reborn"), Nick Smithers, Damien Thomas, Liberty Ross (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Ryan Hayward, Charlotte Comer, Duane Henry (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Anna Skellern (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Penny Downie (last seen in "Jackie"), David Redden, Alberto Vazquez, Nicole Harvey, Annabelle Wallis (last seen in "Tag"), Audrey Brisson, Suzanne Bertish (last seen in "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool"), Benn Willbond (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby") and archive footage of Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "Love, Gilda").
RATING: 4 out of 10 two-olive martinis
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