The idea for a Sylvia Plath biopic has been knocking around since the writer’s suicide in 1962, and over the years various screenplays have visited the life of the tragic feminist icon. For the longest time Meg Ryan was threatening to essay the role, but thankfully taste and time intervened (new trout-pout or not, Meg would never pass for 30 this weather) so we have been spared this monstrous, though morbidly intriguing prospect.
Instead, the much-cherished part has gone to the infinitely preferable Mrs. Martin. No arguments there, she even bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Plath, but will the actual film have us leaping like Lady Lazarus, or sticking our heads into the nearest oven? Well, neither course of action would truly be appropriate, as it happens. Christine Jeff’s solid, if rather routine drama charts Plath’s tempestuous marriage to the poet Ted Hughes (Craig), from their passionate courtship at Cambridge University, through years of marriage plagued, and ultimately sundered, by an unholy alliance of her internal demons and his cruel infidelities.
Surprisingly, Sylvia generally eschews booming hysterics in favour of stormy silences. But Plath isn’t just about moping, regardless of how many 14-year-old gothlets frown from corners with copies of The Bell Jar to hand. She was an extraordinary talent, and Sylvia is unfortunately unable to enliven the proceedings with her spirited writing, as Plath’s daughter, Frieda, refused the filmmakers the rights to her mother’s work.
This creates a huge void at the very heart of the film, but the production does have its merits all the same. Its depiction of Plath’s increasing isolation is devastatingly powerful, thanks largely to Our Gwynnie (as Heat magazine would have it). Here, she transcends the whole glacial, Hitchcockian blonde thing to put in a heart-wrenching, brilliantly paradoxical performance. Her Sylvia is both half in love with death, and an irrepressible force who recites Chaucer to cows in perfect Old English. Craig’s smouldering, taciturn Hughes is equally impressive.
Still, while this is a decent overview of the poet’s life, it would be fantastic if someone could do a companion piece giving Plath’s work some kind of fractured, out-there, inspired American Splendor treatment. For the moment though, Sylvia is suitably depressing.

106 mins. Cert 18. Opens January 30