John Maybury has directing films for some time, but it wasn’t until 2005’s The Jacket starring Keira Knightley and Adrien Brody that he popped up on my radar. I didn’t particularly like that film, but I’m not about to throw a guy under the bus after the first go ’round, especially when his follow-up stars Knightley, yet again, along with Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Matthew Rhys. While I would say The Edge of Love is certainly a step up from The Jacket it never quite manages to get over the hump as the story seemed almost too big for only one two hour feature. This film could have been a three-hour epic and Maybury certainly shot it as one, but the fact it works on any level is due to a great cast that saves many moments that really are nothing more than detached and seemingly contrived storytelling.
The Edge of Love involves the lives of two of Britain’s biggest literary celebrities, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Rhys) and his wife Caitlin (Miller), and their relationship with Vera Phillips (Knightley) and William Killick (Murphy). Set in 1941 London the story takes a variety of tangents all involving rivaled love. Do you love me? Does he love her? Are you still in love with me? Whose baby is this? The talent involved makes the film a relatively easy watch, but it would be hard to call it interesting as the story has a hard time living up to its glossy presentation and the emotional ups and downs never quite find an even balance.
Maybury knows how to appeal to an audience visually, but the visuals in this story don’t really matter as you are confronted with love, jealousy, morality, decency, friendship, loyalty and every other kind of human emotion involved in a film focused on destructive relationships. Does it matter how pretty it all looks as you are trying to sort through so much in such a short time frame? While I believe this film would have worked much better if it had been longer, or alternatively had a couple of storylines dropped or executed differently, I wouldn’t necessarily want to sit through a revised version. Once was enough.
Yes, the film has its value as several shots in this feature are fantastic and even Keira Knightley not lip-synching and singing her own songs as an underground singer is a plus. Sienna Miller is an actress that doesn’t get nearly the professional attention she deserves due to her controversial personal life and both Matthew Rhys and Cillian Murphy rise above occasional clichéd plot developments to add a certain level of intrigue even though the patchwork screenplay has that “been there, done that” feel to it with shades of several films one could mention in comparison.
Should you be interested in Edge of Love I can’t say you will come out altogether unsatisfied, but this film does have plenty of bumps along the way that will either leave you wishing there was more to fill in the story’s gaps or less to remove those gaps entirely. For this reason the film isn’t necessarily satisfying, but the performances make it worth the watch should you give it a chance.
INTERESTING FILM FACT: The Edge of Love was written by Knightley’s mother, Sharman Macdonald.
