Once upon a time, in those long, dark days before "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Trainspotting", and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" came to deliver us from boredom, the British film industry survived on a bread and water diet of Merchant-Ivory costume dramas.

For anyone who remembers those years of subsistence filmmaking with nostalgia, "The Heart of Me" could be a welcome trip down memory lane.

For most moviegoers, though, it's more like a party guest who's turned up so late, they've become a complete embarrassment.

Reprising her role as the darling of such stuffy melodramas, Helena Bonham Carter plays Dinah, a wild, bohemian artist who spends her time reading Blake and dancing in the rain.

Since this is 1930s England, Dinah exists in an airless world of over-starched collars who don't appreciate - and are completely terrified of - her zest for life.

Falling in love with Rickie (Paul Bettany), the husband of her prim and proper sister Madeleine (Olivia Williams), Dinah realises that her wild abandon may bring more misery than happiness to herself and the rest of her family...

In adapting Rosamond Lehmann's little-known 1953 novel "The Echoing Grove" for the screen, director Thaddeus O'Sullivan takes all his cues from Merchant-Ivory, conjuring up a steely blue vision of inter-war London that's suitably claustrophobic.

He even lets Bonham Carter get her kit off again, just for old times' sake - a strategy that's likely to prompt shouts of "Put it away woman, we've seen it all before!"

It's not the only thing we've seen before. Trudging from one cliché to the next - pregnancies, confinements, accusations, repressions - "The Heart of Me" rarely convinces.

In fact, the only thing that stands out is Olivia Williams' beguilingly ethereal performance as Dinah's hard-done-by sister. Which leaves us with plenty of costumes, but not much drama.