Easy Virtue

2 / 5 stars
(Cert PG)
Easy Virtue
Miasma of naffness ... Easy Virtue PR

A Noël Coward adaptation needs some brittle wit, but this is about as brittle as a month-old piece of parked chewing gum. It is a strained, quasi-spoof version of a 1924 play by Coward (filmed by Hitchcock as a silent) that, remarkably, anticipated Britain's abdication crisis; it portrays an American woman with a past who astonishes a well-heeled English household by showing up married to the family's adored son.

The movie has Jessica Biel as the glamorous adventuress Larita, trying hard to impress her steely new mother-in-law, Kristin Scott Thomas. Ben Barnes is her still-bedazzled husband and Colin Firth plays the laconic master of the house, who is the only person who really understands Larita. Period numbers and modern pop arrangements are coyly juxtaposed on the soundtrack and a miasma of naffness hovers overhead.

The script by writer-director Stephan Elliott undermines the material by slipping arch modern phrases and gags into everyone's mouths. Scott Thomas does her best with a feeble script that is not worthy of her. Firth and Biel perform a rather elegant tango together, which cheers things up a little, but this is a heavy-footed affair.