Martha Fiennes is a talented film-maker who goes her own way with seemingly not a doubt in the world.

This long ensemble drama, equipped with an excellent cast, is as much a critique of the more doubtful days of New Labour, when the rich got richer and the poor were scarcely visible to them, as a soap opera about a dysfunctional middle-class family and their friends. Chromophobia might just as well be called WestEnders.

Nobody is very admirable, except perhaps the ex-cop (Rhys Ifans) who becomes a social worker and tries to succour Penelope Cruz's single mother dying of cancer. Ralph Fiennes plays a gay art dealer who almost gets killed by three young thugs he has unwisely let into his home.

Then there's Damian Lewis as the partner in a firm who allows himself to be drawn into a financial scam for the benefit of a corrupt government minister.

There's his sexually frustrated wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) who shops till she drops and screams at her psychologically damaged eight-year old son. And there's Ben Chaplin as a journalist who discovers the scam and betrays his best friend by selling the secret well.

Added to all that is Ian Holm as one of those judges who gets girls to dress up as nurses and tickle him half to death as his wife (Harriet Walter) tends the roses outside.

Chromophobia is always watchable, but as its plot turns unfold, it looks increasingly like a melodrama with a few too many pretensions.

I would abdure Fiennes never to put Beethoven on the soundtrack again. It invariably makes what's on the screen look insignificant beside it. But still, the cast do their best.