Italian director Franco Zeffirelli steals a march on most cinema biographers in that he knew his subject - opera diva Maria Callas - in real life.

So impressed was he that he counted the soprano as one of the three most important women on the 20th century...along with Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher.

Here he fictionalises the last four months of her life - she died aged 54 in 1977 - in order to show Callas' "search for absolute perfection and integrity".

So what does he do? He casts Jeremy Irons as a gay rock promoter who just happened to have worked with Callas. And gives him a pony tail.

It's been difficult to take him seriously in anything so every time Irons - whose hair extension brings to mind Status Quo's Francis Rossi - minces on screen everything goes high camp.

The casting of Fanny Ardant as the iconic singer works better, with the French actress convincing as the reclusive star (even if she kicks off looking like Olive from On The Buses).

Zeffirelli employs the dodgy premise of rock promoter Larry (Irons) tempting the singer out of pill-popping retirement to lip-synch along to her classic recordings.

However, she's not just mouthing the words boyband-like on an operatic version of Top of the Pops but a full-scale movie production of Carmen.

Larry reasons this will re-awaken a legion of old fans as well as winning fresh converts and video sales will convert into big bucks.

After some initial reluctance Callas agrees and is soon plying the young leading man with cognac and trying to seduce him in her dressing room.

It's all a bit daft with Zeffirelli even tossing in a redundant sub-plot about Larry's doomed affair with a "Callas Queen" who happens to be, er, deaf. Work that one out.

The musical interludes are impressive and the director is obviously in love with his subject. The problem is Jeremy "Any Old" Irons. And it's a big one.

Tim Evans