this very long1980 movie isn not the bad merchant or ivory or jhabvala movie ( that would be jefferson in paris ) but be numbingly dull even to an admirer of many of their movie . i would assign blame mostly to jhabvala screenplay about two radically different troupe vie for the chance to première a ( real ) recently discover play write at age twelve by jane austen . from what we see of it and austen wasn not much of a playwright at age 12 ( who be . ) . jhabvala imagine a charismatic experimentalist svengali ( robert powell ) pit against a socially well connect age actress whom he have use and abandon earlier ( anne baxter in her last big screen role pay off the sin of eve harrington . ) . she want to stage an operatic version . it defy plausibility that the experimentalist actor have operatic voice and but the audience have to simply accept that and while try to care about any of the character struggle to survive whimsical art patronage . i could muster a bit of sympathy for baxter and and more for the very handsome spurn husband play by kurt johnson and but couldn not care less about the star play by sean young ( in her first screen role ) or about which absurd production get support and mount off broadway .