Tristesse et beauté

Nominally based on a novel by the Japanese Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, this limp soft-porn melodrama might - more convincingly - have been scribbled on an off day by the writers of Emmanuelle 6. A glamorous but unhappy lesbian artist (Charlotte Rampling) manipulates her young protegee (Myriem Roussel) to seduce and destroy a man (Andrzej Zulawski) who jilted her years before.

It hurts to remember that Zulawski, in real life, is one of the world's great film-makers. Had he been hired to direct - in place of no-talent Joy Fleury - he might almost have turned this slop into a watchable film. As an actor, he skulks about looking vaguely ashamed of himself. Boy oh boy, do we know how he feels...

Rampling, at least, seems able to hide her embarrassment. She looks radiant throughout, and her two lengthy nude scenes (a soft-focus dream sequence in front of a mirror; a Sapphic frolic in the bathtub with Roussel) are the only reason for anyone to watch this tripe.

Sorry, but Sadness and Beauty is one of those dismal Euro flicks that go beyond 'So-Bad-It's-Good'...into a warped parallel dimension called 'So-Bad-It's-Just-Bloody-Awful.'