THE EDGE OF LOVE
Directed by John Maybury
Produced by Rebekah Gilbertson & Sarah Radclyffe
Written by Sharman Macdonald
Released by Capitol Films/BBC Films
UK. 110 min. Rated R
With Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy & Matthew Rhys
 

As The Edge of Love opens in 1940, it seems like yet another Masterpiece Theater-type tribute to the devastating impact of the Blitz on the stalwart citizens of London. The stiff upper red lips are partying as Vera Phillips is singing down in the tube during a bombing. (And yes, that’s really Keira Knightley’s quite lovely voice coming out of her heavy period make-up). Captain William Killick (Cillian Murphy) only has eyes for Vera, who’s filmed in extended close-ups, not unlike in director John Maybury’s famous music video for Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

Intriguingly, the film soon turns into a writer’s biography when Vera runs into her childhood sweetheart from Wales, Dylan Thomas. Matthew Rhys (TV’s Brothers & Sisters) gets to unfurl his native accent, especially in the rumbling, illustrative poetry excerpts that echo throughout the film. The romance triangle, with Vera at the vortex, takes a turn when Caitlin (Sienna Miller) literally blows into town. In a lively performance beyond her fragile celebrities in Interview and Factory Girl, Miller is not just a breath of fresh air in the hot house atmosphere (even if her ostensibly Dublin accent wavers)—Caitlin is Thomas’s wife, mother of his child, and a frustrated artist who cogently comments on his scribbled writings. She complicates the quadrangle by becoming Vera’s best friend, and their lovely scenes are cozily intimate without erotic tensions. She can also aggressively challenge Thomas in ways that Vera cannot, by matching his infidelities.

Ping-ponged between these two forceful personalities, Vera comes to appreciate William’s romantic devotion. When the captain goes off to war (which is a separate, gritty storyline like that of Atonement), the friends left behind flee London to rural Wales, and cinematographer Jonathan Freeman (Hollywoodland) abruptly shifts the look and tone with many shots of beautiful landscapes and rustic buildings. Filmed on the actual Welsh locations, the three are more intensely thrown together in their isolation, but their nontraditional, communal lifestyle is now a feast for local gossip. (The real-life Vera and William were producer Rebekah Gilbertson’s grandparents.)

Through William’s difficult post-war adjustments, Maybury expands on looking at posttraumatic stress (what was then called shell-shock) that he touched on in The Jacket. As the Thomases continue to drink and lash out, The Edge of Love manages to make Vera and William’s quest for calm and normalcy touching and not just conventional, even as they fade into an ancillary footnote in the poet’s tempestuous life story. (Scriptwriter Sharman Macdonald also happens to be Knightley’s mother)

Though the film is very uneven in style and focus, as it shifts from London in extremis to windswept Wales to war and to a courtroom clash, the fraught complications among the foursome raise universal issues of freewheeling young love and friendship during wartime that makes them resonate beyond the particulars of a period or a famous personality. Nora Lee Mandel
March 20, 2009