Words and Pictures

The well-made adult drama is such a rarity that when something like Words and Pictures comes along and nearly misses, you wish you’d never been reminded of adult dramas in the first place. Juliette Binoche has a terrible haircut and rheumatoid arthritis as Dina Delsanto, a great artist slash art teacher. Clive Owen is the resident English-teaching drunko, so off-putting and boorish he practically becomes Gerard Butler before your eyes. They banter and bully and bang, stumbling toward a resolution about the value of art and the senses. Director Fred Schepisi (Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation) and writer Gerald Di Pego (The Forgotten, Phenomenon) are going for a Spencer-Hepburn vibe but Binoche, so warm and appealing in her native French, is nothing but sharp edges and blunt force---though watching her paint is thrilling---while Owen uses the drunk excuse to sleepwalk through his performance. Despite the considerable talent of its leads, Words and Pictures is so concerned about the merits of its artistic arguments that it makes a case for neither. —Tara Thorne