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Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Strong and Moving!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The Tom and Viv of the title are T.S. Eliot and his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, played by Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson in an Oscar-nominated performance.I always come away from bio pics about artists thinking that the people around the artist would make a much more interesting subject for a film, because the artists themselves are usually rather dull. It's refreshing, then, that this film focuses much more on Vivienne and her struggles with mental illness than it does on the life of Eliot. The film's not entirely successful, but Richardson earned her Best Actress nomination and she's given able support by Rosemary Harris, who plays her mother in couple of brief scenes.Grade: B

Miranda Richardson does a first-rate job of portraying the high-spirited, slightly wacko Vivian. As time wears on, and Eliot achieves fame, her manic flights go higher and higher. Finally she is "put away" as an embarrassment. Even though her condition improves, neither her brother nor her husband appeal for her release. Someone would have to look after her then. They put in their years as her caretaker and now have other things to do. the exasperation one feels in the beginning of the movie toward Viv becomes a deep sympathy for the middle-aged woman planted in a gilded cage with nothing and no one of her own.

Tom and Viv is a powerful story centered on one woman's fight to be an individual in mid-nineteenth century British society. Miranda Richardson does an excellent job of portraying the emotional depth of an intelligent, carefree woman forced into living a conventional, traditional life while her doctors, husband (acclaimed American poet T.S. Eliot), and family believe her to be suffering from mental illness. Richardson captures the rage, quirkiness, and strength of a woman trying to make a difference in the world when nearly everyone she meets tries to keep her in her place. William Dafoe, as Tom, brilliantly shows the effects of Viv's upstarts on a man seeking to maintain traditional societal values and blend into a conventional, though artistic and intellectual, world. While the movie does not delve too deeply into Eliot's poetry, it centers on his life and the life of the woman he claimed to love; perhaps, making a statement on how life blends into art. Ultimately, Tom and Viv is a tragic story about the inadequate health system offered to women in the 1930s and how societal conformity put a wrench in the love and marriage of two brilliant people. It enrages the feminist, humanitarian, and author in me, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a deep and compelling story of both a poet and a woman's fall.

i had to start this movie like four times before i could stand its horrifyingly realistic portrayal of spousal poetic betrayal enough to watch it to the end. miranda richardson is staggeringly effective in portraying a xianthippe-ish thorn in t. s. eliot's side.