Impromptu

Starring: Emma Thompson

Directed by: James Lapine

RS: Not Rated

1990 Comedy

James Lapine is a theater man of uncommon skill, as witnessed by his staging of such musicals as Falsettoland, Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park With George (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize). In his debut as a film director, he's chosen a seemingly perfect subject: the nineteenth-century romance between the introverted composer Frédéric Chopin (Hugh Grant) and the free-spirited novelist George Sand (Judy Davis), a woman who sported a man's name and wardrobe.

Lapine's wife, Sarah Kernochan (9 1/2 Weeks), wrote the script, and he has recruited two stage colleagues: Mandy Patinkin plays poet Alfred de Musset, who loves Sand, and Bernadette Peters plays Marie d'Agoult, who is the mistress of Franz Liszt (Julian Sands) but has her eye on Chopin.

Despite all this assembled talent, the film stubbornly refuses to come to life. Neither stuffy nor wildly revisionist, Kernochan's script only fitfully captures the humor and agony of mismatched geniuses in love. And except for Davis, who brings human dimension to her larger-than-life character, the performances are too flamboyant. Instead of pitching the story to the intimacy of the camera, Lapine is still playing to the back rows. His failure is not one of intention but of scale.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 602