Call me cynical if you will, but the underlying message of this dark little film is, "Don't marry a neurotic, manic depressive, suicidal female poet (or poetess as they say in England) who has already tried to 'top herself' while in her early teens!" Poets however, as we well know, are a breed apart, and this is the star-crossed tale of Sylvia Plath, a fragile brilliant and enigmatic writer and her glamorous, wayward equally talented husband, Ted Hughes, who eventually became the British Poet Laureate long after her untimely death in 1963.

It's fascinating how some actresses open up to a female director, and in this case Christine Jeffs elicits a good multi-layered performance from Paltrow (just as Kiwi director Jane Campion did with Meg Ryan for IN THE CUT - my next review.). However, both films are self-indulgently too long by at least half an hour, and even so Sylvia's famously turbulent marriage to Hughes is not fully examined in all its damaged complexity. There are far too many solo shots of Plath stewing in her own mental and emotional agony, and one wonders how such a person was able to raise two very young daughters virtually alone. The film also fails to show satisfactorily the drive that created such nakedly honest prose and poetry.                       

That having been said, the acting throughout is very good. British stage actor, Daniel Craig (so good as Paul Newman's scumbag son in THE ROAD TO PERDITION), gives an excellent portrayal of the brooding, intense, womanizing Hughes, showing both his passion and chilly emotional detachment. Paltrow, under Jeff's sure handed direction, believably conveys Sylvia's emotional vulnerability, set off by her beloved father's death when she was 9 and obsessive love for Hughes, which obviously helped drive him away. Her real life mother, Blythe Danner, is excellent as Plath's cold, ambitious, rather snobby patrician parent, and the great Michael Gambon, as usual, is top notch as her sympathetic neighbor. [On a personal note, I was delighted to see my good friend Andrew Havill doing sterling work as the husband of the woman one of Hughes' major conquests, the one he makes pregnant, which precipitates Plath's suicide. He and I acted together on the London stage earlier this year in the hit satire THE MADNESS OF GEORGE DUBYA - or DR. STRANGELOVE REVISTED with Andrew as "Group Captain Windbreak" a spoof of the Peter Sellers role! Click to get more information on: The Madness of George Dubya]                                                           

SYLVIA is a frustrating film, as we are left asking questions and wanting more. It is never made totally clear why they drifted apart. Was it her jealousy and instability that drove him away, or his many affairs that contributed to her paralyzing insecurity. We are left with the image of a passionate, talented couple thrown together by their love of writing, but unable to move beyond that into a normal life together. The acting lifts this film above the glaring holes in the writing, and makes it worth watching.

Sylvia
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