Forget Posh and Becks, Madonna and Guy or Elton and David. Celebrity couples don't come much more volatile than Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

Now both bestowed iconic status, their most creative era as poets had them eking out a very un-celeb style life in draughty garrets.

The American Plath (Paltrow) first met the dashing Hughes (Craig) while studying at Cambridge on a Fulbright Scholarship.

"Him and his crowd ...all they care about is poetry," Plath is warned. "Everything else is just a distraction".

As advice goes it was pretty wide off the mark as Hughes, she would find, would get quite easily distracted...by a skirt and an admiring smile.

However, before his eye began wandering, the couple enjoyed a whirlwind romance focused around their love of literature and strong physical attraction.

A move to America proved to be a mistake (they both suffered writers' block) but on return to Britain their careers flourished and they had two children.

However, dark undercurrents threatened their relationship - the insecure Plath had tried to kill herself before and Hughes revealed himself to be a serial womaniser.

The combination of his selfish philandering and her desperate need to be loved proved the catalyst for the most tragic of outcomes.

Unlike Anthony Hopkins or Julia Roberts, Paltrow's celebrity hasn't yet overwhelmed her roles and she turns in a compassionate, sympathetic turn as the tortured poet.

Craig convinces as the charismatic Hughes even if his character is slightly underwritten while the supports are uniformly excellent.

A waspish Blythe Danner, Paltrow's real-life mother, is particularly good when she warns Hughes that her daughter needs nurturing ...all the time.

It's an unflashy film, sombrely shot in pokey cottages and dreary London flats with Plath's impending fate almost unbearably paced.

When the inevitable conclusion does arrive, Jeffs achieves a real sense of waste and futility of a death at just 30 years old.

Tim Evans