‘Queen of Pop’ Madonna says she can have it all in Venice
ITALY: Madonna jokingly defended her title as “Queen of Pop”
Thursday, quipping she would never give up her throne for love like King
Edward VIII the subject of her latest film screened in Venice.
Hundreds of crazed fans screamed as the singer posed on the red
carpet in a striking pale blue dress with a red butterfly pattern and a
long sweeping train matched with large red-rimmed sunglasses and a
dynamite red lipstick.
The glamourous singer kissed and hugged the “W.E” cast members before
heading inside to watch the movie premiere at the oldest film festival
in the world, along with guests including Italian fashion designer
Valentino.
Madonna’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,
after speeding 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”. She also said there were
“elements of myself” in the film, and said she could sympathise with
Wallis as an outsider, an American living in London.
“I empathize with Wallis. Public figures or icons are often just
reduced to a soundbite, just a handful of attributes. I think people
tried to diminish her... I tried to make her human,” she said.
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.
Costume designer Arianne Phillips worked extensively with labels such
as Cartier, Dior, and Dunhill to recreate Wallis’s extraordinary
appetite for fashion and exquisite, enormous collection of jewels and
shoes. Earlier on Thursday, rounds of applause and riotous laughter met
Roman Polanski’s grotesque comedy of manners “Carnage” at the press
screening ahead of the world premiere in the evening.
The screen adaptation of playwright Yasmina Reza’s acclaimed Broadway
play “The God of Carnage”, Polanski’s film tells the tale of two sets of
parents who meet up to talk after their children get into a fight at
school.
AFP. |