Words and Pictures

As damaged private-school teachers who connect over a war between art and literature, Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche possess real chemistry in Fred Schepisi's Words and Pictures. After a string of playing dewy-eyed duds and stone-faced actioners, Owen gets a chance to indulge in the sort of fiercely intelligent roguishness that forged his fame, and while Binoche successfully sells her character's brittle self-denial, she can also power a small town with the beams that emanate from her smiling face. Unfortunately, the dialectic about the relative “honesty” of words vs. pictures is never as smart or inspiring as Schepisi and screenwriter Gerald Di Pego would like us to think, and the terrain gets more and more sludgy as the film's heart starts to warm. Words and Pictures piddles along comfortably enough, but also shows an unfortunate fondness for shallow conclusions and unearned reconciliations.