Madonna's Filth

nik.mercer — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:34:28 -0800

Anthem readers were introduced to British actress Vicky McClure back in the fall of ’07, after we’d been wowed by her performance in This is England. Her next project was to be Filth & Wisdom, the much-anticipated directorial debut of Madonna. When McClure had first heard that the Material Girl was interested in casting her, she thought it had “got to be a joke”—and then she received a script in the mail, went down for a reading, and started shooting soon thereafter. Her co-star is another personality you’ve read about in our pages—Eugene Hutz, of the acclaimed gypsy punk band, Gogol Bordello. “His energy is off the charts,” McClure told us. “I stayed in the same hotel, and he was below me. I’d get in, really long day, and his music would be on all night, blasting through, and all I can hear is Eugene singin’ and dancin’ downstairs…”

Somehow a movie was made, and that movie has now debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, where early reviews are highly favorable. Filth & Wisdom also stars the terrific Richard E. Grant—if you’ve yet to see Withnail & I, you’re only half human—and has been dubbed by the Times of London a “sprawling comedy” and a “celebration of London’s ethnic stew.” The paper balks at calling Madonna’s film “Altmanesque,” but somewhat grudgingly admits that it demonstrates that the diva has “real potential as a film director.”