MovieTime

Review

by Julie Rigg

A Dylan Thomas menage a trois? In the late war years, Dylan Thomas, ever the freeloader, brought his wife Caitlin to share digs with Vera Philips, his teenage sweetheart from Swansea. Later, with Vera's husband at the Front, Thomas, the women and their babies shared adjoining cottages in Wales.

Sharman Macdonald has written this tale of friendship between two women. John Maybury's direction turns it into a salacious soft porn drama in which the women are driven by sexual tension and rivalry, and greedy Dylan wants both. The women's lingering farewells across the bonnets of vintage cars can't rescue this film after Maybury has given the sexual politics this tedious twist—it reminds me of the cabaret song about a gleeful male fantasising 'two ladies'.

Sienna Miller makes a lively Caitlin; Matthew Rhys a mischievous Dylan, and Kiera Knightley a doe-eyed, fatuous Vera. Not only is this a classic case of a director misinterpreting a script—where's the bloody poetry?

Director: John Maybury
Cast: Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys, Cillian Murphy
Producer: Rebekah Gilbertson, Sarah Radclyffe
Script: Sharman Macdonals
Cinematographer: Jonathan Freeman
Editor: Emma E. Hickox
Music: Angelo Badalamenti
Running time: 106
Australian distributor: Hoyts
Language: English
Classification: M