( CNN ) -- There 's a pretty good chance that you missed Madonna 's first film as writer-director , the low budget London comedy `` Filth and Wisdom . '' Her second will be harder to avoid -- it 's a handsomely produced British heritage picture with James D'Arcy as King Edward VIII and Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson -- but nevertheless you should make every effort to do so . This flimsy vanity project cruelly exposes the Material Girl 's limitations . It 's a tedious , vapid , threadbare movie that only a superstar could get made -- or would want to . For reasons we can only guess at , Madonna evidently identifies with Mrs. Simpson , the American divorcee vilified by the British press in the late 1930s when she stole the heart of the world 's most eligible bachelor , Edward Windsor , the Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne . ( Despite his laddish demeanor , Madonna 's second ex-husband , `` Sherlock Holmes '' director Guy Ritchie , came from a line of blue-bloods and baronets . ) The Brits had no shortage of reasons to dislike Wallis ; some valid , some pure snobbery . Not only was this foreigner married when the affair got started , and already a divorcee , she was also rather unattractive by conventional standards . A plain Jane with mannish features who was inappropriately frank about her social-climbing aspirations . As if that was n't enough she was also on chummy terms with members of Hitler 's inner circle and , salacious gossip suggests , an expert in the Oriental arts of lovemaking ( though Madonna 's having none of that , the movie is perversely sexless ) . A less suitable match was hard to imagine , and in the constitutional crisis that followed , Edward was forced to abdicate in favor of his stammering sibling , Bertie . In other words , Mrs Simpson 's hardly your typical `` cause cÃ©lÃ¨bre , '' though that does n't stop Madonna from painting her as a feminist heroine in `` the greatest love story of the 20th century . '' In this high-gloss version of events , Wallis is an abused woman ( viciously beaten by her boorish first husband ) , who compensates for her physical shortcomings with her sense of style , quick feet on the dance floor and candid American wit ( not that we hear any ) . As for Edward , history 's naÃ¯ve , racist and foolhardy womanizer is recast as a debonair sophisticate and improbable champion of the working classes . In the film 's most egregious line , Wallis greets her royal suitor with an oh-so-casual , `` I 've been reading that book you recommended about social reform . '' Right , and they dedicated the rest of their days to helping the orphans in Africa too . In a parallel modern-day story that manages to be even more dramatically suspect , Abbie Cornish is Wally Winthrop , the neglected wife of a handsome , philanthropic doctor ( Richard Coyle ) who wo n't sleep with her and drives her to futile in-vitro fertilization injections ( filmed in wobbly shlock-horror close-ups ) . Obsessed with her namesake , Wally spends several eons wandering through a Sotheby 's exhibition of the Duke and Duchess ' artifacts , catching the eye of a studly security guard ( Oscar Isaac ) , an ex-Russian intellectual who borrows the royals ' dinner service for an impromptu date dressed in a kilt and a bearskin hat . In superstar circles this is what passes for romance . Despite these absurdities , `` W.E . '' is nicely packaged and photographed . Andrea Riseborough miraculously makes Wallis Simpson more interesting than this hagiography allows , especially when she starts to regret her great conquest as the trappings of wealth turn claustrophobic . There are inklings of a real movie in this somber coda , but the interminable modern scenes remain desperately trite , and just because Madonna thinks it 's OK to turn a blind eye to fascism , there 's no reason to follow suit . As Queen Victoria is supposed to have said , `` We are not amused . ''
This flimsy vanity project cruelly exposes the Material Girl 's limitations . Despite these absurdities , `` W.E . '' is nicely packaged and photographed . Andrea Riseborough miraculously makes Wallis Simpson interesting .