Poetic injustice

Two tarts, a poetic louse, and a real trooper make a whole lot of forbidden love in The Edge of Love, a hammy drama on the life and loves of Dylan Thomas

By Alexa Weibel
Published: March 19th, 2009 | 11:05am

In blitz-era London, dashing soldier William Killick (Cillian Murphy) loves Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley), who loves Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), who loves both Vera and his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller), and numerous other women on the side. But Vera also loves William and shares a coquettish bond with Caitlin, who herself dabs her days with other lovers simply to keep up with her husband. For those unaware that Welsh scribe Dylan Thomas lived a life of smutty, soap-operatic fodder, John Marbury’s The Edge of Love is an eye-opener. And, of course, it’s the high-necked, taboo, smutty stuff that might make our mothers quiver — or at very least enthrall the twenties set for the enviable wardrobes alone.

After William attempts to tie Vera down with marriage before setting off to war, the trio retires to the Welsh countryside. But alas, one cares little for any involved in the dominant love tryst of the film. As the boozing bard who declares, “I sleep with other women because I’m a poet — and poets feed off life,” Dylan underwhelms, even if his interspersed poetry might typically soar. Caitlin, the capricious — and often abusive — bearer of his children, is equally a sot, though demands a twinge of sympathy for her eternal battle to rein in a just-beyond-reach companion. Saucy cabaret singer slash Welsh girl-next-door Vera Phillips, despite her struggle as a single mother, simply needs some sense knocked into her--. And the reality check arrives with the return of fragile William, who, destroyed by wife and war, is regrettably the true casualty of the saga.

The melodrama — like Miller’s guise of youthful vivacity — gets tiresome in a plotline less risqué or engaging than that of The Dreamers. The characters may have a sometimes cleverly glib dialogue, but, aside from William, function strictly as children, awkwardly snapped out of varying degrees of immaturity and delusion by the harsh realities of war. If nothing else, Dylan Thomas in his depiction might appreciate one sole thing: being proved true to his words, “Do not go softly into the good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”