The Edge of Love

SYNOPSIS

This emotionally charged drama loosely based on real events stars Keira Knightley as Vera Phillips, the childhood sweetheart of poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), and tells the story of what happens when she runs into her married ex-lover in war-torn London. When Thomas and his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller) are evicted, Vera - now working as a nightclub singer and herself the object of infatuation by army captain William Killick (Cillian Murphy) - invites them to stay. It soon becomes evident that three's a crowd, and the situation doesn't improve when Vera marries her soldier boy on the eve of his posting overseas, and Thomas and the two women move to rural Wales. Director John Maybury's intense story of two women caught in the orbit of a remarkable man has its shortcomings, but it looks wonderful and is rich in period detail. Any lapses in the narrative are compensated for by uniformly good performances, with Knightley (who does her own singing) acquitting herself particularly well.