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Material Girl’s second directorial effort finds few early supporters at the film fest. By Eric Ditzian Madonna attends the “W.E.” premiere during the 68th Venice Film Festival Photo: Getty Images The Venice Film Festival turned into something of a feeding frenzy on Thursday, as critics practically fell over one another in an effort to drum up the harshest disses and most damning, damaging turns-of-phrase about Madonna’s second directorial effort, “W.E.” Their cackles of laughter echoed across the pond the next day, as the Weinstein Company attempted some damage control and a handful of defenders staked out claims that the film had been unjustly dismissed. Those supporters pointed to the lush visual landscape Madonna had captured and the touching love story she’d brought to life. But the critics weren’t having any of it. They slammed the garbled narrative structure, cheesy dialogue and directorial trickery that seemed to serve no other purpose than Madonna’s look-at-me self-servitude. Read on for those critiques and more. The Story ” ‘W.E. is rather better than expected; it’s bold, confident and not without amusing moments. Still, it’s undeniably a strange concoction. Madonna (who also co-scripted with [Alek] Keshishian) has fashioned a split-level story of two couples: the Windsors, and the growing attraction between Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a contemporary Manhattan woman, and Evgeni (Oscar Isaac), a handsome Russian working security at Sotheby’s. Wally, married to an eminent shrink who isn’t above slapping her around, desperately wants children. (He doesn’t.) Worse, she has inherited her mother’s and grandmother’s obsession with the Windsors (Andrea Riseborough, James d’Arcy) and doggedly researches their lives, seeking clues about how to live her own. In extreme moments, Mrs. Simpson actually appears to her.” — David Gritten, The Telegraph The Direction “What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is. It may even surpass 2008’s ‘Filth and Wisdom,’ Madonna’s calamitous first outing as a filmmaker. Her direction is so all over the shop that it barely qualifies as direction at all. ‘W.E.’ gives us slo-mo and jump cuts and a crawling crane shot up a tree in Balmoral, but they are all just tricks without a purpose. For her big directorial flourish, Madonna has Wallis bound onstage to dance with a Masai tribesman while Pretty Vacant blares on the soundtrack. But why? What point is she making?” — Xan Brooks, The Guardian The Writing “The script is the first problem. Co-written with Alek Keshishian, it’s laden with clich