Noël Coward would be seething in his smoking jacket if he were still around to witness the hash that has been made of his play. Easy Virtue combines Coward’s twin fascinations: the crumbling aristocracy clinging to the remnants of a lifestyle they consider a birthright, and American invaders – fast, coarse and not quite the thing, my dear. The central tensions of the story could be summed up in two lines from his song about the bankrupt gentry: “The stately homes of England we proudly represent/ We only keep them up for Americans to rent.” Unfortunately, in this by-the-numbers adaptation, Coward’s wit is somewhat blunted and the overriding spirit of the piece is mean rather than blithe.

At the helm is Stephan Elliott, the Australian writer/director who blazed to glory in a rain of sequins with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a tale of two slightly ropey transvestites and a transsexual touring the Outback. Both films deal with a culture clash of seismic proportions, but while Priscilla was playful and unexpected, Easy Virtue is rather conventional.

The action takes place almost exclusively in the stately home of the Whittaker family. Kristin Scott Thomas as the lady of the house dominates the story with a deliciously toxic performance. Her beloved son, John (Prince Caspian’s Ben Barnes, a trifle bland), has just returned from Monte Carlo with a highly unsuitable new bride. Mrs Whittaker blanches when she meets Larita (Jessica Biel, lacking the requisite va va voom), the platinum blonde racing driver from Detroit. “Oh, you’re American . . . ” she sighs wearily, her palpable disappointment like a bucket of cold water dumped over the joyful introductions. Filling out the cast is Colin Firth, curiously absent as the jaded Mr Whittaker. Firth is shabbily charming in a role that requires him to slope around in the background looking unkempt for most of the movie, only to steam into the foreground in the final 15 minutes. Katherine Parkinson and Kimberley Nixon, as John’s younger sisters, get little to do other than yap unappealingly like irritable lapdogs.

The film lacks a real spark between John and Larita, and depends on the antagonistic relationship between mother-in-law and new bride. Thomas is more than up to the task, her every comment dripping with acidic disdain and repressed fury, but while Biel is undeniably beautiful – she’s an Art Deco dream in her costumes – she’s missing the fire that could have ignited this battle of wills. Elliott relies upon an incessant, perky soundtrack of Coward songs and soundalike numbers to drive the film. Particularly ghastly are the contemporary songs – I spotted Car Wash and Sex Bomb – reworked in the style of Mad Dogs and Englishmen. This, presumably, is what it sounds like when you run out of ideas in the first 30 minutes of the film.

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