Wanderings and … wonderings.

With its soft-focus palette of muted colours, this is a ravishing picture to look at, but the script doesn’t deliver on the talent or the favourable premise – the limits of freedom of expression, the extent to which life imitates art, these addressed through the last days of the Marquis de Sade.

Michael Caine plays it straight as the libertine’s nemesis, with no attempts on his part at scene stealing. He is the best for that, no petty grandstanding from Sir ‘My Cocaine’. Geoffrey Rush is fine, but what could have been a diabolically entertaining performance is squandered by the speed with which the movie descends into repetition and tedium.

It got so lightweight past the hour mark and the Phoenix character’s theological hang-ups served more of a distraction than anything else, shoehorned in with a Kate Winslet romantic subplot that trammeled what looked like a promising showdown between Messrs Rush and Caine. 

A wasted opportunity, and it all ends with a whimper.