French New Wave auteur Claude Chabrol is often compared to Woody Allen. Both men are pushing 80, both are madly profilic. Nor do the uncanny similarities end there. This 2006 black comedy, like Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona, centres on a smart, sexually daring young blonde who wants to follow her heart rather than her head.

The big problem with Chabrol’s offering is its smart-alec script. Right at the start, our attention is brought to the source material, a turn of the century scandal involving womanizing architect Standford White, his current mistress and her husband, a news story that Chabrol claims “is more easily imaginable today than during the era in which it happened”.

Via the story of thoroughly modern Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) - a TV star caught between debauched, manipulative writer, Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand) and unstable, perverted rich kid, Paul, (Benoit Magimel) - Chabrol wants to show that Western culture still flip-flops between decadence and puritannism and that now, as then, neither system allows women to stand on their own two feet.

But his take on the naughty naughties fails to convince. In terms of her career, Gabrielle is a very specific creation - her British equivalent would be The Culture Show’s Lauren Laverne - yet she lacks texture. She quickly forgives Paul for trying to throttle her after an argument. Later, she meekly lets him choose her dresses (a red one, for a crucial scene) as if she were Scarlett O’Hara in Gone For The Wind. The French public, via a last act court case, take her her seriously. We can’t.

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Poor Sagnier. A blissfully slippery presence in any number of post-modern projects (Francoise Ozon’s 8 Women and Swimming Pool), and mischievously sweet in lesser fare (P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan), she seemed proof that experience and youth can go hand in hand. Here, for the first time, she looks like a novice, telegraphing Gabrielle’s excitement/naivete/strain. Her talent is made to look thin indeed and it’s this - not the string of silly outfits designed to show off her long legs and nipples - that makes you want to lower your eyes.

Granted, much about the film is watcheable. Berleand and Magimel - though their performances are very different in tone - complement each other, while Caroline Silhol, as Paul’s immaculately haggard mother, steals scene after scene. Her revelation about his childhood expodes gently, just as it should.

The film itself, however, remains an icky mess. One’s final impression is that aging legends make unreliable puppet-masters. And that it’s all too easy for a desirable young actress to be left dangling in mid-air.