Sylvia, just the name seems grayish and gloomy, and don't get me started on Plath. Plath is the sound you make when you throw-up and pass-out at the same time.

At the polar opposites of human nature you have the type who bounce out of bed upon opening their eyes, throw open the curtains and smile into the day ahead - they can't wait to smell the coffee and seize the day. Then there are those (myself included much of the time) who greet the morning light with all the enthusiasm of a hungover vampire. If you find yourself toward the latter end of this spectrum then you will, no doubt, enjoy, appreciate and relate to Gwyneth Paltrow's wonderful embodiment of the infamous Sylvia Plath.

I think when I was in high school I was once required to read the Bell Jar and though I can't say I remember a word of it, I've always found myself drawn to the tortured artist mystique. The whole "Vincent" "this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you," thing has always held a strange allure. Though I think alot of people cop to an artistic temperament as an excuse for bad behavior, I do believe there were and always will be legitimate cases of artists burdened with the kind of brilliance that is literally unbearable. And I think Plath has been canonized as much as any other as a victim of her gift.

In Christine Jeffs new bio-pic we follow Plath's days as a mischievous American Fulbright Scholar in Cambridge, and the film, scripted by John Brownlow, moves us briskly enough through her fury at unfavorable reviews of her poetry, her encounter with Ted Hughes whose poems had already entranced her, and their intense, sexual and poetry-ridden courtship. Folks these are the roles Gwyneth Paltrow was born to play, and her performance in this film makes it worth every depressing moment. This isn't a film with the kind of scope that made The Hours an Oscar-worthy film - but if you liked The Hours then you'll most likely enjoy Sylvia.

Jeffs and Brownslow are to be commended for their objective overview of Plath's difficult life, it refuses to take sides. It is not an apology or hagiography of Plath, nor does it demonise Hughes. Above all it raises, and leaves us to ponder, the paradox that Plath was unable to write good poetry in the happy times of her marriage with Hughes - and that the last magnificent outpouring came when he left her, when she was alone and going crazy. The film also makes it clear that Plath's struggles with her sanity were due more to clinical depression, than her artistic frustration. We learn early on that Plath made a heartbreakingly elaborate attempt to end her life at an young age. Which left everyone in her family more than aware that another attempt was just a matter of time.

Much of the appeal of this film is in learning the details of her life. For example, the fact that she bore and nurtured to children to the best of her fragile ability and tucked them in bed before making herself a pillow on the oven door was a revelation for me. Even the suicide itself was portrayed matter-of-factly without sentimentality on the part of the film's writer and director. They are not afraid to show Plath's mood changes, her weaknesses and her despair. The film grows stronger as it grows darker. The scene where Plath's control slips during a dinner when her antennae picks up the affair between Hughes and the wife of their dinner guest, the poet Assia Weevill, is absolutely perfect and is one of the films more memorable moments. And as is often the case with the geniuses of the world, it was at her times of greatest loneliness and despair when her muse burst forth furiously. When Hughes walks out on her and leaves her with these babies that she is emotionally ill-equipped to care for, is the period when her famous "Ariel" poems came pouring out.

First of all this is not a feel-good movie, so be prepared for that (it doesn't offer that merciful glimpse of kindness and light that the end of The Hours did). But if you consider yourself a serious film fan, then what excuse do you have for passing up a film that presents one of our finest actresses in the most ideal vehicle of her career.