Fine performances cannot elevate Words and Pictures above a problematic screenplay that asks for too much and provides little in return.

The good news is that esteemed Australian director Fred Schepisi is once again working at a consistent rate. The bad news is that he’s back to his ol’ shtick of following one good film with a poor one. Where he gave us Six Degrees of Separation, he followed with I.Q. Where he delivered Last Orders, there came It Runs with the Family. And where he returned from self-imposed exile with the excellent The Eye of the Storm, now he’s delivered Words and Pictures.

The premise of the film is interesting. Two high school teachers – alcoholic English teacher Jack Marcus (Clive Owen) and crippled art teacher Dina Delsanto (Juliet Binoche) – embark in a rivalry over what art form holds more power: words or pictures. Of course being the romantic drama that it is, complications ensue when these fierce adversaries develop feelings for one another.

This is as natural a plot development as they come. The problem is how it develops under Schepisi’s watch, with many a false note in this relationship rendering it unbelievable.

It all comes down to the problematic script by veteran screenwriter Gerald Di Pego (who also produces). Where his knack for dialogue is in fine display here with the fun, biting back and forth between Owen and Binoche a highlight, the structure of the films love story is a shambles, with gaps, leaps and a lot of imagination needed to believe in the romance that Di Pego and Schepisi are trying to sell and is the foundation that Words and Pictures relies upon.

It’s not without a lack of trying from its leads. Binoche does Euro elite pissy better than most and does it well here. But the real draw is Clive Owen, who continues to deliver first rate dramatic work in so-so movies, channelling that intensity of his into a character of passionate zeal and frustrating self-destruction, Owen’s portrayal as a published writer and educator just as strong as his portrayal as a drunkard.

Schepisi introduces other elements to Words and Pictures, most notably how the use of both can be utilised in a negative way, as played out amongst the students of this teaching couple.

In the end none of its gels, leaving fragments of a good movie that with a little more focus, and a little more polish, could have reached its potential.