Madonna jokingly defended her title as “Queen of Pop” on Thursday, quipping she would never give up her throne for love like King Edward VIII — the subject of her latest film screened in Venice. The diva’s second directorial work, “W.E.”, starring British actors James D’Arcy and Andrea Riseborough, tells the tale of the king’s famous romance with American divorcee Wallis Simpson — and his subsequent abdication. “Would I ever give up my throne for a man or a woman?” a flirtatious Madonna said after the advance press screening at the 68th Venice Film Festival. “I think I can have both… or all three!” she told journalists.
The star — looking sleek and glamorous in a black dress and high cream collar pinned with a sparkling jewel cross — had sped across the lagoon from the luxury Bauer hotel on Venice’s Grand Canal where she is staying. Madonna said she had wanted to capture the “world of luxury, beauty and decadence” of the 1930s, as well as the “rarefied air in the modern world”, which is also one of wealth and sensuality, but “does not guarantee happiness”. The controversial passion between the king and extravagant socialite Wallis is told through the eyes of a lonely modern-day New Yorker, desperately seeking the fairytale happy ending that she believes the famous couple had.
The cinematography alternates between sharp images drawn out by Wallis’s striking red lipstick or startling blue eyes, and grainy, hand-held camera shots evoking the bridge linking the two dramas across history. Style icon Madonna said that there were “elements of myself” in the film, and said she could sympathise with Wallis as an outsider, an American living in London.