W.E.

W.E. (2011) is a British-American romantic drama directed by Madonna that you can watch online on iFILM. The film runs two timelines side by side: the affair between King Edward VIII and American divorcée Wallis Simpson, which ended with his abdication from the British throne in December 1936, and a 1998 New York story about a woman named Wally Winthrop who becomes absorbed in that same history.

Andrea Riseborough plays Wallis Simpson not as a schemer but as a woman who spent her life being defined by what she cost someone else. James D'Arcy is Edward, all romantic certainty and no practical sense. Abbie Cornish plays Wally, who falls for a Russian security guard (Oscar Isaac) while sifting through the wreckage of her own marriage and the Windsor estate auction.

Madonna shot it with a costume designer's eye for period detail and an unexpected lightness of touch — the black-and-white flashbacks feel genuinely inhabited rather than decorative. Fans of the Wallis and Edward story will find the film sympathetic in ways that most historical accounts aren't. Stream W.E. (2011) online on iFILM.