Words and Pictures

For a film about the redemptive power of art and literature, this romantic comedy drama lacks the all-important magical creative spark. Clive Owen plays a boozy English teacher at a posh American private school. Once a promising writer/poet, he now coasts through life and is facing the sack. The arrival of opinionated new art teacher Juliette Binoche - a well known painter whose career has been laid low by the onset of rheumatoid arthritis - prompts a largely good-natured feud between the pair over what is better: written or visual images. But while the "war" reawakens both of their creative juices, Owen's self-destructive impulses threaten to derail the project and their own budding relationship. Reframing Dead Poets Society as a romcom is an intriguing concept but despite likeable turns from the two leads, screenwriter Gerald Di Pego's words and director Fred Schepisi's pictures too often descend into cliché.