The Edge of Love (15)

All's unfair in love and war the film is much less about Thomas than it is about two women who were central to his life. It presents a portrait of friendship, not a portrait of the artist. I've not been able to look at the name Dylan Thomas without being reminded of Kingsley Amis's verdict on the poet in his Memoirs (1991): "Thomas was an outstandingly unpleasant man who cheated and stole from his friends and peed on their carpets." One has to allow that Amis was in his curmudgeonly old age when he wrote those words, and that he had developed an implacable hostility to the Welshman and his poems after only a brief acquaintance. It is a surprise, nonetheless, to discover quite early on that the Thomas of John Maybury's flawed but honourable drama The Edge of Love is, indeed, an outstandingly unpleasant man who cheated and... [read full story]