Merchant-Ivory productions don't usually have the punters brawling at the box office, but once you park your backside, at least you know what you're going to get.

If you're after a couple of hours of beautifully realised, nicely acted and yet uncontroversial melodrama, they're a safe bet.

A Room With A View, Howard's End, The Remains Of The Day: period dramas. High-quality literary adaptations with pre-war settings and well-to-do characters are what they're all about.

Le Divorce, albeit set in modern-day Paris, is more of the same.

This slight melodrama-cum-comedy of manners gets underway with American free spirit Isabel Walker (Hudson) arriving in Paris to visit her pregnant sister Roxeanne (a miscast Watts).

Isabel's timing is perfect; Roxy's husband Charles-Henri (Melvil Poupaud) is just walking out on her and their young daughter.

With the bombshell dropped and divorce inevitable, Isabel is drawn into the aftermath - she stays around to support her sister and immerses herself energetically in the new culture.

Charles-Henri's family are annoyingly French, but it must be rubbing off as she enjoys an affair with his well-connected uncle Edgar (Thierry Lhermitte), despite already having a boyfriend .

Much of the ensuing activity surrounds a potentially valuable painting that belongs to the Walker family who refuse to give it up in any settlement.

This plot device introduces a variety of characters which were hopefully fleshed out better in Diane Johnson's source novel than they are here (though Thomas Lennon's money-grabbing brother is very amusing).

And that's the film's biggest problem. You can almost hear the pages turn as the story flits between different strands, and though the filmmakers are too experienced to lose focus of what's going on, their attempts to incorporate so many themes and situations leave several of them thinly sketched.

That said, there's plenty going on, and the fact that it is so reserved and unsensational make it ideal viewing for a Sunday evening.

Elliot Noble