SHOT on location in Cambridge, director Christine Jeffs's follow-up to the charming rites-of-passage drama Rain is an intimate biopic of poets Sylvia Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig).

The film traces their intense and ultimately doomed relationship from the corridors of Cambridge University where they met as students, to the loveless home where the affair came to a shocking and abrupt end with Plath's suicide in 1963.

Sylvia focuses in particular on the writers' work and their differing fortunes, which sometimes caused rifts in their turbulent marriage, fuelling Plath's lack of self-worth and ultimately driving the couple apart.

Screenwriter John Brownlow paints the self-destructive relationship in largely broad strokes and is frightened to get his hands dirty by exorcising all of Plath's demons.

At times, his treatment seems too reverential as if he would rather gloss over the truth than offend the memory of either poet.

Paltrow delivers a courageous, robust performance that delves deep into the wounded heart of the deeply insecure poet.

She captures the vulnerability and the despair of Plath, shielded behind a faade of resilience which gradually fractures as the full realisation of Hughes' betrayal sends her spiralling into the abyss.

The Cambridge locales look splendid and director Jeffs conjures some startling scenes, such as an unbearably tense dinner table sequence in which Plath simmers with jealousy as she witnesses Assia flirting with her husband.

Rating: 6/10