A movie about two insufferable annoying people, talking in hollow phrases.

Words and Pictures is a testament to the enormous value of quality acting. The film stars the very gifted, very sexy duo of Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen. They portray teachers at an elite preparatory school in Maine. Once a popular writer, he is now an alcoholic whose life is in stasis, though he still tries to engage and inspire his students. She is a revered painter who, sidelined mid-career by rheumatoid arthritis, agrees to teach an art course. The film charts their courtship, a Tracy/Hepburn-style blend of barbed wordplay and slowly intensifying romance, as well as an academic feud: whose artistic discipline is more vital? The way this debate is shown to ignite spirited conversation and debate among the dreamy-eyed students is an example of an artificial, borderline stilted quality which restrains this film overall. Its comfortable, crisp, white-on-white, so-New-England-it-hurts depiction of high school rings false, particularly during a climactic assembly sequence. Yet Binoche and Owen electrify. Each expertly conveys the way a sculpted persona (the devil-may-care wit, the ultra-icy stoic) can disguise painful demons, and their sophisticated chemistry is hard to resist. They obviously cannot transform this minor-key comic romantic drama into a masterpiece, but they significantly ease the burden. It goes down smoothly.

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