Keira Knightley has argued that her new film The Edge of Love, about the two women in Dylan Thomas' life, is really about female camaraderie.
In the John Maybury film, based on the life of the Welsh poet (Matthew Rhys), Knightley plays his childhood sweetheart Vera Phillips while Sienna Miller stars as Caitlin MacNamara, his wife.
But while it could be expected that the wartime drama would be a tale of two women warring for the heart of one man, the actress see the film as the story of an unusual bond between rivals.
"I think it is a story about female friendship and female rivalry and about a friendship that manages to surpass a bloke," Knightley explained on ITV1's LK Today.
"I was trying to be intelligent there but completely failed!" she joked.
Miller added that the bond between the two women is "really rare".
"I think both of them are a little bit lonely and they had never really had this kind of a relationship with a woman before and it was kind of, almost, born out of their love for the same man," she added.
Despite loving the same man, both Caitlin and Vera struggle to remain faithful, with Vera's husband William Killick (Cillian Murphy) damaged by both his experiences in the forces and his insecurity over his wife's relationship with Dylan.
And according to Knightley, the pain and deceit that go hand in hand with romance are the central themes of the film.
"I think the whole thing is about the reality of relationships and how you can ruin something, how people aren't always good, how people aren't always honourable," she explained.
The Edge of Love is released on June 20th.
17/06/2008 14:28:25
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