Being the resident homosexual film critic, I’ve been handed the task of reviewing Madonna’s directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom. This film was supposed to be released in Montreal late last year, but was unceremoniously yanked at the last minute. This month, it’s out on DVD. The film was savaged in the U.S. and U.K., where critics complained that it played out like a tired rerun of Madonna’s book, Sex, rife with tired fascination with all things fetishistic.

Okay, so I do think Madonna is cool. Her “Hung Up” song, and especially the accompanying video, made for an undeniably superb comeback. Her film work, not so much. She’s had a tortured relationship to the medium, desperately wanting to become a respected film star, but never quite doing it. (Witness Swept Away, her ex-hubby Guy Ritchie’s first rotten movie and one of the most misfired remakes ever.)

Filth and Wisdom employs the network-narrative screenplay template, with a gaggle of disparate characters navigating their way through a down-and-dirty London. There are hustlers, dominatrixes, queers, thieves and addicts (in other words, Madonna’s fanbase). There are occasionally quirky bits of dialogue, but the main problem with this movie is that it’s showing us various bits of kink and expecting us to be titillated by it. In that respect, it feels strangely dated: is this stuff really supposed to knock our socks off?

In the age of XTube, where anyone and everyone can make their own porn at home, Filth and Wisdom won’t be raising any eyebrows. I really wanted to like this movie. I’ve wanted to like every Madonna movie ever since Desperately Seeking Susan (arguably the only good one she’s ever done). But I couldn’t quite get there.

Madonna did once appear in a Woody Allen movie—Shadows and Fog—albeit fleetingly. Which brings us to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Allen’s latest, a movie well worth revisiting. Allen has little investment in the DVD format, it seems, as he once again offers no commentary track.