Mawkishly sentimental in one moment and nonsensical the next,
acolytes of Dylan Thomas won’t be impressed by this drama delving into
the Welsh poet’s love life. The first half of the film set in wartime
London evokes Philip Kaufman’s Henry & June and is burnished in
beautiful sepia tones courtesy of Canadian cinematographer Jonathan
Freeman. But the meandering script does Matthew Rhys (as Thomas),
Sienna Miller (as Caitlin, Thomas’s wife), Keira Knightley (as Thomas’s
first love Vera) and Cillian Murphy (as William, Vera’s troubled
soldier husband) no favours, and by the time the story settles into
domestic drama in windy Wales, you won’t care who fathered whose child.
This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.
