aidan-mann

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas excused from serving in active duty is doing his bit for the war effort producing bits of prose for some propaganda branch of government in Whitehall.

Thomas is portrayed as a freethinker believing in free love married to a woman with an equally demanding artistic streak and likewise with a penchant for extramarital romance. Thomas writing and reciting his poetry in systematic domestic mayhem throughout becomes somewhat priggish towards the end, resting somewhat uncomfortably on his society connections and pulling rank on a war veteran, who had shot up his house, and who was incidentally married to the woman he had been having an affair with.

The real story of this film is the love of two women, one (Keira Knightley) whose first love was Thomas (Matthew Rhys), the second (Sienna Miller) who is Thomas's wife. At times it reminds of The Singing Detective, as in very good television with slightly sinister overtones laid on top of scenes of surreal camp absurdity.

The story takes place during WW 2, starting out in London, where four French women, in orders from the head of Special Operations Executive, (British department of covert warfare), are recruited by a French officer (Julien Boisselier) and his sister (Sophie Marceau), to attempt the rescue of an English agent (a geologist), wounded in hospital, in Nazi occupied France, who is in possession of important strategic information, and in danger of being discovered and taken prisoner by the Germans.

From the beginning of this French production derived from a French language novel, the storyline makes it clear that this is a British controlled operation to safeguard information about the D day landings. One operative states that her loyalty is to De Gaulle not the British but is successfully won over and is along with the rest of the crew parachuted into France.