Following on from Le Divorce, Merci Docteur Rey is another laboured, Paris-set farce from the Merchant Ivory production outfit. Written and directed by the American Andrew Litvack, it's a convoluted tale of operatic divas, neurotic actresses, rent boys, dead bodies, bumbling cops, family secrets, and hash brownies. The efforts of an experienced cast - including Dianne Wiest, Jane Birkin, and Simon Callow - can't invigorate the tedious screenplay or distract from the stilted direction.

Roles and identities preoccupy the characters of Merci Docteur Rey. The closeted twentysomething Thomas (Stanislas Merhar) replies to a personal ad, and ends up witnessing the death of the father he never knew. Meanwhile his opera singer mother (Wiest), unaware of her son's sexual orientation, is absorbed in the preparations for her part in Puccini's Turandot in the French capital. A bewildered Thomas attempts to see a psychoanalyst, only to find that the Dr Rey of the title is being impersonated by voiceover artist Penelope (Birkin), who believes that she is in fact Vanessa Redgrave.

"RESOLUTELY IRRITATING"

The best farce - whether it's Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown or Fawlty Towers - is always rigorously plotted and creates a seemingly inexorable comic momentum. Dr Rey, though, unwinds in fits and starts, and struggles to find any consistency in its tone.

It's a film that seems to want to show off its supposed cleverness: it calls attention to its theatricality (shots of red stage curtains and straight-to-camera observations); it namechecks DePalma's Dressed To Kill and Powell's Peeping Tom; and it boasts numerous Freudian references. Its characters remain resolutely irritating throughout, with the performances ranging from the ineffectual (Merhar) or the unsubtle (Wiest and Birkin) to the pointless (Jerry Hall's cameo). Best avoided.