"If you want to make films," Eric Rohmer told Jacques Rivette, "there are two writers you need to read: Balzac and Dostoevsky." Rivette, now 79 and once a scion of the French New Wave, bases his latest film on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais, a tale of blighted love set in 1820s Paris, and faithfully transcribes the author's text throughout.

This makes the film easily the wordiest in London at present - which is just as well since it is clear the director didn't have the budget for a handsome costume drama. The flighty duchess of the novel's title, who frequents the balls of Restoration Paris, is played by Jeanne Balibar, and the stubborn one-legged general who courts her by Guillaume Depardieu (who lost a leg after a motorcycle accident four years ago), the son of Gérard.

If you appreciate their acting, and enjoy the words of the battle between them - during which the duchess prevaricates until it is too late - it will seem fascinating. If you don't, the formalism of the procedure, and the lack of a more expansive background, may tax your patience.

Don't Touch the Axe begins and ends in a Mallorcan convent where the general finds his lover before a series of Parisian soirées become the venues for their on-off relationship. It is helped by the presence of Bulle Ogier, as the friend who instructs the duchess in the politics of love, and Michel Piccoli as an affable elderly courtier.

The title, by the way, refers to the words of a guard on showing the general the weapon which beheaded Charles I.