Sometimes its feels as if the world of cinema has gone crazy with biopics. It’s probably the one connecting factor throughout the various nations- that a film about a famous person is seen to be a seller, yet it’s usually an incredibly dull affair that boasts one or two noteworthy performances, from Night and Day to La Mome. Another film to add to the list of mediocre biopics is The Edge of Love, a story that centres around the debauchery of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
The film follows the viewpoint of Vera Phillips, Dylan Thomas’s childhood friend and supposedly first love. Working as a singer in London during The Blitz, she comes across Thomas in a bar, who is of course drunk and attempting to wrangle booze money out of friends and family. Their potential romance is marred by the arrival of Thomas’s wife, the borderline nutcase Caitlin, Thomas’s match in promiscuity and alcohol consumption. Vera ends up living with the couple, befriending the normally catty Caitlin. Soon, Vera gets involved with the possessive Killock, who gets shipped off to the War, only to return to a pregnant Vera, and suspicions of her infidelity.
If there’s one surprise in this film, its Keira Knightley’s performance. Many are still dubious about her acting performances. While many saw her role in Atonement as a pouting object, she was probably the best part of the film. And while her “Lizzie” in Pride and Prejudice was slightly off the mark, she deserved her Oscar nomination. In this film, not only is her Welsh accent convincing, but she carries a kind of rural sultriness that makes her character more watchable than it could have been. Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 1% [?]