_Tom and Viv_ reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs A disconcerting and not altogether coherent mix of nostalgia, regret, and revisionism, Brian Gilbert's _Tom and Viv_ opens with an image of a narrowly framed, distant, close-to- bucolic past. As Tom Eliot (Willem Dafoe) gazes lovingly from his classroom window, Vivien Haigh-Wood (Miranda Richardson) playfully gambols on the campus lawn below, tossing a bouquet of flowers high into the air, a shot that gracefully slides into...slow motion. Ah, for the pleasant, sun-splashed afternoons at Oxford circa 1915. The relationship between the Eliots was, of course, hardly splendid; in fact it was disastrous by almost any measure. Tom became the famously alienated T.S. Eliot and Viv spent the last 12 twelve years of her life institutionalized as "morally insane,'' without ever hearing again from her husband. But as the film dreams of their coupled beginning, the moment looks sweet and optimistic (even though Dafoe can't pass for 26 years old). Problem is, the film's first hour or so is thematically scattered and narratively dreary, laying out a series of events that don't grant much emotional space for viewers or protagonists. The couple marries, fights, makes up, she's "irrational,'' he's nervous, they fight, they write _The Wasteland_, she acts up again, they fight some more. It probably doesn't matter whether these things happened precisely this way (I seem to remember something from high school about Ezra Pound's participation in crafting _The Wasteland_: he's nowhere here). But the film's dramatic movement is skewed and abbreviated: you can't imagine what they saw in each other, or how they passionately loved each other, as they repeatedly insist they do. Their liaison is made impossible almost immediately, apparently because Viv lacked self-control (due to "women's problems'' and prescribed drugs). The facts that the London high-social climate was stifling for women and Tom was an insufferable prig (an American who wanted desperately to be English, and Catholic to boot) do come up, but initially Viv may look frighteningly "vulgar'' (as her doctor calls her). Still, there's some tension in this portrayal; you may find yourself fully appreciating that she trashes her hotel room when, after their first failed try at sex (she bleeds), Tom abandons her for a picturesque walk on the beach, or that she makes a loud ruckus so that her uptight family will have to pay her some attention. Such tension is visible in Tom as well. Convinced that he must live a "common life'' in order to be a poet (he says, "Poetry is a mug's game,'' twice in the film so you get the point), he withdraws from most social activities, becoming notoriously aloof and severe (they live in a tiny apartment owned by his teacher/mentor Bertrand Russell [Nickolas Grace]). Here Tom's retreat into Catholicism starts to look like self-defense: he needs a structure because life with Viv is so chaotic. Her very vocal protests are unnerving to him, but at first he defends her poetic brilliance. You know that he also feels trapped too, because he cries in front of a visiting Bishop, and because of a final metaphorical image: an elevator grate clamps shut in front of his face and the car descends, for what feels like minutes. Slow pacing and short scenes. It's an unusual combination that would seem to underline the movie's central conflicts between ultra-proper etiquette and Viv's spontaneous eruptions. But the early scenes are bogged down in plot details that go nowhere, except to paint her as a vibrant, increasingly lunatic wife (emphasis on that role in particular). Then again, even the Eliots' deteriorating relationship is only sketched, alluded to in brief images of Tom's tense jawline or Viv's widening eyes. (Perhaps the film assumes that you come in with background information, to fill in the narrative gaps.) Richardson manages to chew scenery in a variety of consistently interesting ways; it's a showy part, and she's resourceful. Dafoe, meanwhile, is stuck with the stuffy sourpuss role, and he plays it with requisite woodenness. T.S. Eliot is so damned repressed that it's hard to care what happens to him and hard to tell what he's feeling about Viv. (I gather his enigmatic soul is the point.) It soon becomes clear that everyone is trapped, so no one is responsible. Viv's mother Rose (played with exquisite angry grace by Rosemary Harris) is sympathetic to her daughter but constrained by devotion to her very proper husband. And Viv's brother Maurice (played with perpetual distress by Tim Dutton) admires Tom but can't seem to articulate his anxiety over Viv's outrageous behaviors (until he's at the forefront of the "family'' decision to commit her). The film opens with a grateful acknowledgment of Maurice's help in telling the story, so perhaps his version of this story is what we're seeing; it's difficult to tell. But when the situation becomes unmanageable, Maurice goes to war or "toddles'' off to Africa to "try his luck'' at (imperialistic) administrative work. (These willful, self-protective absences may have something to do with the film's spotty storyline, but that's unclear as well.) Viv eventually takes refuge in a kind of friendship with a woman chemist (who fills her prescriptions and seems to be the only person who warns her about taking them). During one scene, Viv sneaks out of the house to see this "friend'' (whose class difference is marked by her calling Viv "ma'am''). As she closes the door behind her, Tom is in another room, reading his poetry to an unseen audience. "Poetry,'' he intones in deadly-calm voice-over, "is not an expression of emotion, but an escape from emotion.'' Here again the message is quite plain: there is no such escape, only more anger and frustration. Since Tom remains so resolutely cryptic, Viv is the point person for the film's indictment of diverse social orders. She's victimized by repressive customs, her upper-crusty family (where silence and stiff upper lips are the norm), the medical establishment (the doctors pathologize her refusal to act according to her feminine "place''), the literary world (who think her outbursts threaten Tom's career), and Tom himself. By the time her condition is reassessed (by an American, no less) as a hormonal imbalance, she's quietly needle- pointing and defending the genius of her estranged husband, fully accepting of her place in hospital. It's a properly crushing moment, a long way from that opening scene at Oxford. But it's been a slow, uneven trip to get there. Cynthia Fuchs teaches film and media studies at George Mason University. Copyright by Cynthia Fuchs. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author. This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.