W.E. tells parallel stories of two similar women. Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) is an American who moves through the social circles of Europe in the 1930s with her husband, Ernest (David Harbour). She meets Prince Edward (James D'Arcy) and there is an immediate attraction. They soon begin seeing each other, despite the fact that she is married. The other story takes place in 1998. Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) is a former auction house employee who is married to a doctor (Richard Coyle) who is never home. When the belongings of Wallis and Edward go on the auction block, Wally begins to spend her days looking at them, where she catches the eye of a security guard, Evgeni (Oscar Isaac). Lonely and sad, she begins to fall for his flirtations. The movie then explores the parallels as the two women begin their forbidden romances.

I've got to hand it to Madonna, she's made an ambitious move with W.E. Not content to make a standard biopic, she and co-writer Alek Keshishian have created a story which uses the lives of Wallis and Edward as a jumping off point for a symbolic mirror story with Wally. The parallels between the two women are both obvious and subtle and the movie deftly cuts back and forth between them. Towards the end of the film, Wally begins to see Wallis as a sort of spiritual guide.

However, incorporating two stories has also hindered W.E. as a historical drama. In retrospect, I feel that the movie focused more on Wally than it did on Wallis and Edward, which is what we presumably came to see. The film hits the high notes of their relationship, rehashing some of the facts which we learned in The King's Speech, but it never goes far enough. This was a man who gave up the throne of England for his true love and I feel like the movie only scratched the surface of their story. We learn a little bit about Wallis' past relationships and very little about Edward's. Once they get together, we hear the issues concerns Edward's royal status, but don't get a real sense of them as a couple. The worst part is that just a hint of research will reveal stories of racism and eating disorders. Clearly not pleasant topics, but this would have helped to have rounded out the characters.

That's not to say that Wally's story isn't interesting, but it seems weird that Madonna and Keshishian would have put so much work into creating the fictional side of the story when they could have simply made a straight-forward story of Wallis and Edward. Again, I applaud the movie for trying something a little different. However, most of Wally's story isn't very original. How many times have we seen a movie with a bored housewife who feels neglected by her workaholic husband? And her interest in Wallis Simpson is a bit too vague (we learn that her mother and grandmother loved Wallis, but that doesn't explain everything). Having said that, Wally's relationship with Evgeni (note that they have the same initials as Wallis and Edward) is something interesting, mostly due to the fact that he's more than just a security guard. (And also because Cornish and Isaacs were enemies in Sucker Punch.)

So, how is Madonna as a director? Not bad. The movie moves along at a fairly good pace, although I felt that it spent too much time in the present. As one would expect, the movie has a nice look and she nicely portrays the characters enjoying the finer things in life, especially Wallis and Edward's travels. The direction is fairly straight-forward save for one head-scratching in which Wallis' party is suddenly set to the "Pretty Vacant" by The Sex Pistols. I think that a lot of people went into this movie wanting to hate it because Madonna was behind the camera. What I found was a movie which clearly had some flaws, but it was both entertaining and informative, although it could have offered more of both.

W.E. offers a surprisingly entertaining auctioneer on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 20 Mbps. The image is very sharp and clear, showing no defects from the source material. There are some shots which are noticeably grainy, but I'm fairly certain that this was done intentionally. The colors look very good and the image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail is good, as we can make out the textures on objects. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 3.9 Mbps. The dialogue was a bit muffled when I watched it at the volume which I normally use. At an increased volume, this problem improved, but it was still notable. The stereo effects were noticeable, as they illustrated off-screen sounds. The surround effects came into play during party scenes and at the auction. The music sounded very good, most notably the out of place Sex Pistols song.

The W.E. Blu-ray Disc contains only one extra. Despite it's self-agrandizing title, "The Making of W.E. Featuring Madonna" (23 minutes) is a pretty good featurette. Through on-set footage and interviews with the cast and filmmakers, we learn about the production of the film. Madonna, wearing her smart glasses, explains her feelings of the characters, the casting process, and the look of the film. We also hear from the actors, who talk about their characters and how they approached their performances. As one would expect, there's an emphasis on the costumes. There's also a discussion of the various locations used in the film.