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TORONTO — A somewhat defensive Madonna brought “W.E.,” her much-maligned historical farrago about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, to the Toronto International Film Festival for its North American premiere on Monday. There weren’t unintended laughs at the morning press screening here — unlike two weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival, where Madonna’s second feature as a director also received mostly scathing reviews from papers in her adopted English homeland. There was a steady stream of walkouts at the sparsely attended screening in Toronto.
The middle-aged former provocateur’s costume romance (barely a PG-13) was, ironically, competing for attention with the festival’s edgiest and most buzzed-about entry — “Shame,” a drama about a Manhattan sex addict that’s loaded with full-frontal male and female nudity.
The relative few who stuck it out to the dreary end of “W.E.” (which stands for Wallis and Edward) seemed underwhelmed at best. Some questioned the movie’s highly sympathetic gloss on the Windsors — far more realistically portrayed in last year’s “The King’s Speech” as shallow and materialistic Nazi sympathizers — as victims of the royal family, their
“Obviously, Madonna’s theme song here is ‘Don’t care much about history,’ “ quipped one wag. Her Madgesty admitted as much in her press conference afterward: “In the end, I think truth is subjective,” she said.
“We can all read the same history books and come away with a different point of view.”
As for her critics, she said of her self-financed vanity project, “I can tell when people are reviewing my film and when they are reviewing me.”
Not a conventional biopic, her film has a dual focus: One is Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor (Andrea Riseborough) — a twice-divorced American whose scandalous affair with King Edward VIII (played by James D’Arcy as a blond cipher) caused him to abdicate and marry her.
The other is Wallis’ namesake, Wally (Abbie Cornish), an unhappy 20-something New Yorker who becomes obsessed with their love when their personal effects are auctioned in 1998 at Sotheby’s.
The poorly edited film flashes between 1998 and various time periods going back to 1924, when Wallis is seen being beaten by her first husband.
In the more contemporary story, Wally is beaten by her husband, a wealthy psychiatrist who doesn’t share her desire to have a child.
The film is most interesting for its costumes — a lot of vintage Schiaparelli for Wallis. Another positive point is Riseborough, whose performance manages to create sympathy for the social-climbing clotheshorse without much help from the paper-thin screenplay by Madonna and her “Truth or Dare” director, Alek Keshishian, which is filled with clichéd dialogue.
The filmmakers try to wave away well-documented suggestions that the Windsors were cozy with the Nazis as “gossip” — and ignore historians’ belief the couple was exiled to Bermuda during World War II (which is barely mentioned) because of government fears that Hitler planned to re-install Edward on the throne.
All the cutting manages to pretty much rob the royal romance of any sense of drama.
Even Madonna’s former gift for outrageousness is rarely on view, except in the two most risible sequences.
At one point, the former king, in exile, drops Benzedrine tablets into the Champagne at a dull party — one of too many in the film — and Wallis hitches up her skirt and dances to the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” — imagined history according to Madonna.
At another time, the elderly duchess dances to Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” for the amusement of her dying spouse.
The 1998 sections, which include fantasy appearances of the by-now-deceased Wallis, are even drearier.
Wally spends countless scenes mooning over the Windsors’ personal effects, fighting with her husband and being pursued by a Russian security guard (Oscar Isaac) at Sotheby’s (which gets the year’s most extended product plug). She also poses as a reporter to gain access to the Windsors’ private letters, which are held by Mohamed Al-Fayed — father of Princess Diana’s lover.
The film’s message, Madonna said at her press conference, “is that in the end, happiness lives in your own hands.”
She said she had conceived the idea for “W.E.” years ago, but first wanted to make a less technically ambitious film.
Her directorial debut, the incoherent “Filth and Wisdom,” was barely released in the United States.
The marginally better “W.E.” is scheduled to receive a more ambitious release here beginning Dec. 9.
“It’s very much a movie about objects,” said Madonna, who fussed with her actors’ hair and costumes before each scene.
“Wallis was very much a presentational character,” Madonna said. “She cared very much about clothes, makeup, luxury and
flattering lighting in the rooms she inhabited.” Well, they didn’t call Madonna the Material Girl for nothing.
lou.lumenick@nypost.com