A marriage of convenience

It says a lot about the state of British cinema that even in this, supposedly its latest vibrant annus mirabilis, not one but two versions of that dusty drama-soc standby An Ideal Husband are in the offing. In the first to be released, directed by Oliver Parker, the cast has apparently been instructed that the way to deliver Oscar Wilde dialogue (extended pause for effect) is to act as if you're delivering Oscar Wilde dialogue (cocked eyebrow, ripple of polite laughter).

This genteel drawing-room approach would barely pass muster on Shaftesbury Avenue these days, but with bankable names like Rupert Everett and Cate Blanchett in the cast, it seems to be what the transatlantic multiplexes want.

Parker hardly produces a vibrant new reading of the play, and only in the central section does the faintest hint of moral complexity rear its head. The modern stylistic touches come down to a dash of period-costume fetishism - yankings of corsets, placings of orchids - and some camp in-joking in the casting of gay icon Rupert Everett as an inveterate womaniser. "Are you still a bachelor?" he's asked. "Rrresolutely so!" he replies with languorous rrrelish. A Turkish bath shared with Jeremy Northam is a token gesture in what's otherwise a traditional, altogether unqueer Wilde.

The best value in the cast (an airy, noble Blanchett; Minnie Driver so pert it hurts) is Julianne Moore, as dastardly Mrs Cheveley. Making a grand entrance looking louche in a barouche, she does improbably cosmopolitan things with her accent. Her permanently lubricious tone, as if she's wearing mink-lined knickers, gives a decidedly outre ring to ostensibly innocent lines such as: "You're interested, I know, in international canal schemes."

This is costume comedy by the book, but the visuals do offer a distinctively lustrous Visconti-style sheen. Otherwise, however knowingly it's done, Wilde's play is still treated here as heritage silverware dusted down for a big occasion.