Here's ammunition for those who say that foreign directors these days shouldn't be allowed to make anything without subtitles. Bille August's Best Intentions was a deserved international success, but best intentions are not enough when it comes to this massive screen adaptation of Isabel Allende's epic novel. Rarely has 147 minutes seemed longer and the ironic thing is, in this telling of Allende's saga, there seems hardly enough plot for an hour and a half. Meryl Streep is the fey spirit who can move objects and foresee the future; she marries hopeful miner Jeremy Irons, attempting a downright peculiar accent. He becomes the ruthless patron of a hacienda, but his daughter (Winona Ryder) gets involved with a budding revolutionary (Antonio Banderas) who is the antithesis of everything Irons stands for. Somewhere in this is Glenn Close as Irons' sister, yearning after both her brother and his bride, but clearly auditioning for the role of Mrs Danvers in the sequel to Rebecca. Most of the lines are delivered by the actors as if in a trance and the film never reaches the epic scale to which it aspires.

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