Tom And Viv [1994] [VHS]

Variously diagnosed with "moral insanity," anorexia and hysteria, Vivienne Haigh-Wood suffered from severe menstrual symptoms most of her life, as well as an inherited tendency for manic depression. Having collided in their desperation to escape their mothers, she and Tom married in 1915, to their families' disapproval and to Tom's quickly encroaching disgust. By the time Vivienne was committed to an asylum in 1938, five years after T. S. Eliot deserted her, she was a lonely, occasionally demented figure. Shunned by literary London, she was the neurotic wife whom Eliot had left behind.

Tom and Viv, a gorgeously produced, but terribly sad movie, begins after Tom and Vivienne have met and focuses on their troubled the marriage. The opening scenes show Vivienne fraught with headaches, sudden violent mood swings, irregular periods and showing her finding a type of solace and security in her relationship with Tom. Told from the point of view of both Tom and Vivienne, the movie is judiciously divided into four parts: 1915 - when Tom and Viv are courting, and when Vivienne shows signs of mental illness: 1919, straight after the war, when Tom is beginning to achieve notoriety as a poet; 1932, when Vivienne's illness is beginning to cause public embarrassment to her family, and 1944, after she has been finally committed to the Northumberland House sanitarium.

At first, her family is extremely hesitant to allow the marriage between Tom and Vivienne to take place. Her brother Maurice - stylishly played by Tim Dutton - neglects to tell Tom about her "troubles," and Vivienne's father accuses Tom of being after the family money. Tom, at the time, is a struggling poet, living in an attic in the City with Bertrand Russell who is considered "the most hated man in all of London." Tom feels that poetry is a "mugs game" but he tries to appeal to the good judgment of Vivienne's mother - played with remarkable grace by Rosemary Harris - to let him into the family. Vivienne desperately wants to make Tom happy, and it is to Miranda Richardson's credit that the viewer really gets a sense of Vivienne's quiet desperation. Vivienne is also very supportive of Tom - she reads for him and assists in getting his poetry published; he relies on her completely - she's his "first audience."

Willem Defoe brings a quiet and understated elegance to the role, and he expertly conveys Elliot's obvious love for Vivienne, while at the same time expressing a silent frustration over their relationship. As Vivienne steadily spins out of control, becoming more emotionally erratic, Tom realizes that he's married to a woman "that he loves, but everything that he does with her falls apart." Although he eventually contributed to Vivienne's institutionalization, she remains an honest person, who sticks by Tom, and his beliefs and she spiritually never really leaves him.

With a fine sense of period detail, the film gracefully and elegantly portrays life during the Edwardian era - the stuffy but gorgeous drawing rooms, the hats, the frocks and the newly invented motorcars. Tom and Viv is a fine-looking period piece that is emotionally quite heart wrenching, and the movie contains some of the best performances from some of the finest actors in the business. Mike Leonard June 04.