Colin Firth and Jessica Biel in "Easy Virtue," Sony Pictures Classics, 2009

It’s not a good sign when the best scene in a filmed adaptation of a Noel Coward play involves no spoken words. In Stephan Elliot’s version of “Easy Virtue,” that moment comes when Colin Firth, playing the gone-to-seed patriarch of an aristocratic British clan, engages in a spirited, elegant tango with Jessica Biel as an American daredevil who marries into the family and pays for it in veiled innuendo and snooty bullying from the icy matriarch (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her sullen daughters.

“Easy Virtue” is a period piece set on an English estate, so we know why Firth and Scott Thomas were recruited for this mission. But what on earth is Biel doing here? She kills whenever she materializes on screen in silky threads. But she can’t do anything with a jeweled wisecrack or fragrant bon mot except fumble it onto the carpet like a bobbled champagne tray. Add to this the negative sparks generated between her Larita and her callow husband John, as played -- callowly – by Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian from Disney’s “Narnia” films), and you’d be compelled to share the withering opinion of Scott Thomas’ Mrs. Whittaker that she’s not quite ready to hang with such a tony crowd.

But then, Biel probably hadn’t a chance to grow into the role, given Elliot’s slapdash, hectic direction -- which does little good to anyone here. Scott Thomas’ gifts are especially squandered as you see her struggle to draw out delicate strands of pathos and desperation beneath her character’s genteel cruelty. But the movie keeps getting in her way. It doesn’t wish to trust to subtlety of any kind, opting for gaudy anachronisms and glib attitude. Since I’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s silent 1927 version of Coward’s play, I don’t know if he came up with anything as striking as that tango, but I’m betting he did. I’m also betting he made a better movie overall, even without the benefit of sound.

Gene Seymour is our guest critic for the month of May.

"Terminator Salvation" opens in wide release on May 21st and "Easy Virtue" opens in New York and Los Angeles on May 22nd.

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