As soft, beautiful and flimsy as its title suggests, Silk is the most gorgeous-looking waste of anyone's time since Jennifer Aniston said “I do” to Brad Pitt.

Part of the problem lies with the casting of Pitt’s namesake Michael, whose apologetic demeanour and cherubic looks are unlikely to set many female hearts aflutter. To put it bluntly, Silk could do with a bit of rough.

Pitt (the younger) plays Hervé, a French army officer who gives up his commission to work as an envoy for Alfred Molina’s suitably smooth-talking silk trader Baldabiou.

The position will not only allow him to provide for his beloved Hélène (Knightley), but will ensure the prosperity of their village (it’s the sort of rustic Eden where everyone looks as though they drink Stella Artois, so they need the money).

But disaster looms as the disease pébrine has ravaged the European and African silkworm populations. Hervé is thus sent on an eye-opening journey to Japan, there to buy untainted eggs from local big kahuna Hara Jubai (Koji Yakusho, last seen in Babel).

During his stay, he is entranced by the nameless beauty who serves Jubai’s various needs (Sei Ashina). With Hélène on his conscience but his mind full of Eastern promise, Hervé makes the trip again and again. But where does his heart lie?

First, the good news: Silk looks ravishing. Unfortunately, visual form and composition appear to be director Girard’s sole concern. His film is as lovingly arranged and dramatically compelling as a book of 19th century oil paintings.

Bereft of character development (Hervé’s ever-changing facial hairstyles don’t count) and peppered with unintentionally laugh-out-loud dialogue, Girard and co-writer Michael Golding’s adaptation of Baricco’s slight source novel would struggle to avoid an ‘F’ as a GCSE comprehension paper.

It does, however, give Knightley a chance to try out a weird French-Canadian accent. Otherwise, she is required to do little more than look pale and concerned and indulge in a spot of golden-hued rumpy pumpy.

Never mind the quality of the script, though. Just feel the width of the breath-taking vistas, all that beautiful snow and crashing surf, all those steaming hot springs and hands sensually scooping up water and naked breasts and gardens of lilies swaying gently in the wind and… zzzzz.

“Then something extraordinary happened…” declares Hervé, in voiceover. Interest momentarily piques. What could it be? A Martian invasion? A daring bank heist? Redundant silk workers staging a drunken riot in the streets?

Nope, Baldabiou plays a fluky billiard shot.

But then that’s probably about as exciting as a story about the procurement of insect eggs is likely to get.

Elliott Noble