Hollywood ? She was extraordinarily gifted. She was beautiful. She had a passionate marriage to a handsome, equally gifted man. She experienced what’s been described as “a prolonged, high-pitched ecstasy like nothing else in literature.” And then she died, unimaginably young, a suicide at age 30, leaving behind two young children and an ever-swirling controversy. Is it any wonder that the culture can’t get enough of the tragic, compelling life of Sylvia Plath?

A new film, “Sylvia,” directed by New Zealand’s Christine Jeffs and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and British actor Daniel Craig, explores the American Plath and her tortured, tortuous relationship with Ted Hughes, Britain’s future poet laureate.

Aside from Paltrow’s gifted performance, “Sylvia” is neither a film so spectacular it shouldn’t be missed nor something so tepid you have to stay away. Jeffs has turned out a serious, respectful work that is well-crafted but only gets close to compelling near its terrible close.

We first see Plath, much as we saw Kate Winslet as the young Iris Murdoch in “Iris,” careening down the streets of a British university town on a bicycle. She’s a Fulbright fellow at Cambridge in 1956, and she is eager to get hold of a new poetry journal, which, as it turns out, has slammed her latest poems.

Still seething, Plath gets stopped in her tracks by her first sight of Hughes at a Cambridge party, and no wonder. As played by Craig, Hughes with his unruly shock of black hair looks so craggy and quintessentially poetic he’d drive a bad review out of anybody’s mind.

Tragic foreshadowing

Working from a solid, well-researched debut script by John Brownlow, Jeffs keeps an even tone as she investigates this relationship. These idyllic early days are, inevitably, “Sylvia’s” most problematic sections: We don’t want to watch this couple’s happiness knowing as we do what is in store for them.

For as much as they loved each other and helped each other with their work, Hughes and Plath were not ideal mates. They both needed the emotional and practical assistance of a full-time support person, something that neither one could possibly be for the other.

Gwyneth Paltrow stars as American poet/novelist Sylvia Plath in Focus Features' Sylvia. The film covers the poet's career and tragic death.

Marital woes

Adding to the complications was the way Hughes’ flirtatious nature — and his willingness to act on it — attracted groupies given to saying things to her such as “it must be wonderful to be married to such a great poet.” Plath had an unstable nature to begin with — she had attempted suicide before she met Hughes — and this scenario seriously exacerbated the situation.

As the marriage worsens and Plath withdraws deeper and deeper into herself, Paltrow makes her strained mental state completely believable as well as painful to watch. When she confronts Hughes about his deceptions and says in a black fury, “the truth comes to me, the truth loves me,” it’s truly chilling.

As all these forces weigh on Plath in the closing months of her life, “Sylvia” gains a cumulative power. Even if we know the story, its impact is still devastating.