It's the dark days ahead of World War II and wannabe actress Diana (Tapper) has fled her grim foster family for a life on the London stage.

She entertains dreams of following in the footsteps of her critically-acclaimed actress mother Lily Evans.

But, installed in a theatrical boarding house run by tea-leaf reading Julia McKenzie, Diana discovers an acting career can be a grind of disappointment.

The only bright spot in a life of will-sapping rejection is penniless playwright Robin (Leon), who also occupies a room at her digs.

They both have a stroke of luck when Robin's script is taken up by a theatrical agent...on the condition they find a star to top the bill.

Robin suggests faded gay matinee idol Douglas Middleton (Mark Umbers), a louche sexual predator and they also manage to attract Anjelica Huston's rich American socialite as a producer.

However, things take a complicated turn when Diana finds herself drawn to sensitive actor-turned-director Christopher (Lincoln).

Luvvies in their natural habitat - effete soirees with smoking jackets, draughty rehearsal rooms, grim boarding houses - are not an edifying sight. And so it proves here.

Tapper and Leon are not powerful screen presences...so the focus switches to the gay demi-monde that swirls about them in a haze of Turkish cigarettes and absinthe.

Umbers would like to be Rupert Everett (but isn't) while the rest of the camp followers are the sort of one-dimensional gay whose era was 1970s sitcoms.

Terence Stamp's career maintains its dismal downward trajectory as a butler with a deadpan quip while Lauren Bacall and Joss Ackland struggle with underwritten parts.

It looks ravishing (actually filmed around Cheltenham) but debut writer-director Julia Taylor-Stanley's dialogue struggles to breathe and the plot lurches from scene to scene like a rusty gearbox.

Three-year-old Diana had the misfortune to witness her mother die on stage. She's just done it on screen.

Tim Evans