In 2008, Madonna didn’t just release another successful album (Hard Candy), or hit the road again (with her best-selling “Sticky & Sweet Tour”), or get divorced (from Guy Ritchie) – she also became a film writer and a film director.
Because if as an actress you don’t succeed….M has co-written – with Dan Cadan, an assistant to her soon-to-be-ex on his Snatch (there’s a little trivia for ya) – and directed Filth and Wisdom, an indie that’s about an hour longer than its originally intended less-than-20-minutes-long short-film running time, about three London flatmates desperately seeking something.
The movie is a valiant effort on M’s part to pursue her cinematic aspirations. It earns Madonna an A for chutzpah, but a C+ for being able to keep her fans, which you know make up the bulk of the audience, in their seats.
Oh yeah, at last night’s Miami premiere at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, I counted four gays…I mean, guys walking out the door for greener and cocktailier pastures.
It’s also the Queen of Pop’s keen observation that in life, in order to achieve anything true, you have to have both filth and wisdom.
M drives the point home by following Andriy Krystiyan, a.k.a. A.K. (Eugene Hutz), a Ukrainian cross-dressing S&M dominator living with Juliette (Vicky McClure), a kleptomaniac pharmacist longing to travel to Africa to help starving children, and a ballerina-cum-stripper named Holly (Holly Weston).
Each one has a dream in the pipeline, but seemingly not a prayer in heaven of making them a reality.
The lesson of Filth and Wisdom is you gotta fight for your right to be. And that Madonna, should she be able to find a little humanity – although I’d take irony – in her next offering, has earned the right to call herself a film director.
Filth and Wisdom…M had to have it to be taken seriously on the silver screen. Good for her.
My Rating **1/2
Photo: AllAboutMadonna.com.
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