MADONNA’S NEW MOVIE SMASH MISS!
MADONNA and star EUGENE HUTZ
Serious director Madonna at the Berlin Film Festival last night
failed to impress critics with her directorial debut Filth and Wisdom.
Beth Hale of The UK Daily Mail is reporting Feb. 15th.
It was planned to be Madonna’s triumphant response to the film critics
who have poked fun at her acting ability.
Not only has she directed her first movie, she wrote it and was executive producer as well.
But when Filth And Wisdom opened this week at the Berlin Film Festival,
it was to a fanfare of raspberries.
One of the unkindest verdicts was that Madonna had graduated from being a terrible actor to a terrible director.
Madonna, who turns 50 this year, has managed to top the charts for three decades, and also turned her hand to a host of other skills.
She sings, dances, has penned several children’s books, and starred in films including Evita, Shanghai Surprise and the raunchy Body Of Evidence, claiming no fewer than nine “worst actress” awards.
Filth and Wisdom is the 81-minute story of a Ukrainian immigrant who finances his dreams of becoming a rock star by moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix.
Set in London it stars Eugene Hutz, the lead singer of New York gipsy punk band Gogol Bordello, in the main role of a philosophizing S&M escort.
The ensemble of characters also includes a thieving pharmacy worker and a ballet dancer who is forced to lap dance.
The romantic musical comedy-drama comes six years after Swept Away, the film in which Madonna starred under the direction of her husband Guy Ritchie which has become a byword for, to put it kindly, underachievement.
Screen International’s Jonathan Romney wrote: “While Filth And Wisdom may not quite inhabit the same Hall of Shame as Shanghai Surprise, Body Of Evidence and (GOD save us) Swept Away, it’s likely to be forgotten as quickly as most of them.” He did go on, however, to declare it “no better or worse than the average creaky low-budget Britflick”.
The Evening Standard’s Derek Malcolm said: “Madonna has far to go before she can breathe the same air as Godard, Pasolini, Fellini and Visconti, whom she insists she admires in a director’s statement in which two of the four are misspelt.”
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote that the script is a “night-mare of crass and fatuous stereotypes” and “despite living in Britain for many years, she only has the sketchiest notion of what the place is like”.
He added: “Madonna has been a terrible actor in many, many films and now – fiercely aspirational as ever – she has graduated to being a terrible director.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett described the film as “ragged and uneven” with some “dire dialogue and performances”, before adding slightly more kindly:
“The film’s cockeyed optimism and likeable leads conspire to bring a smile by the time it’s done.”
James Christopher, in The Times, was one of the few encouraging voices in the wilderness, saying the star had “real potential” as a director.
“Despite its many shortcomings and an ending so mushy and neat it would embarrass Richard Curtis, Madonna has done herself proud,” he said.
“Her film has an artistic ambition that has simply bypassed her husband, the film director Guy Ritchie.”
Germany’s Die Tageszeitung announced: “Madonna can’t act, and now we know that she can’t direct either … Every plotline in the film is meaningless, and all the actors are rather bad.”
Die Welt added: “Time and again she thrusts herself on to the big screen, and each time she is spurned and ridiculed by audiences and critics alike.”
Die Welt added: “Time and again she thrusts herself on to the big screen, and each time she is spurned and ridiculed by audiences and critics alike.”
Undaunted, the star known to her friends as Madge insists she will make more movies.
Asked on the red carpet whether she would read the reviews, she replied: “I’ll just let my managers tell me what they say. I don’t want to read it myself.”
Who says Madonna cannot act?
She has a flawless fake phony upper crust British accent!
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