An odd, willfully skewed biopic of Dyan Thomas in which we hear little more than a dozen lines of his poetry. Instead we have to endure a raw character exposée seen through the prism of his proto-bigamous relationship with wife (Sienna Miller) and childhood love (Keira Knightley). Matthew Rhys plays Thomas with sufficient charm to inoculate us against his otherwise repellent self-interest and Cillian Murphy makes up the persistently tense lovetet.

The film never seems to decide on where it's going. There's no arc so much as a viaduct from one end of the war to the other. Maybury seems much more interested in his two female leads (who wouldn't!?) than in the man who brings them together and then divides them. Miller is the choice of the two (I found Knightley competent at best but then I have never found her sympathetic) but they both offer dreadfully inconsistent Welsh accents. Other funny decisions include too much for the inconsequential character of William (Murphy), arty production (eg double crossfades) that is neither impressionist nor symbolic and the old chestnut act of period footage which doesn't blend. 4/10