In a dreary turn-of-the-century town, tantrum-prone teen Angel Deverell (Garai) torments her grocer-mother and frustrates her peers with fantastical inventions about the scandalous lives of lords and ladies.

Her budding bodice-rippers are inspired by the nearby Paradise House, where Angel’s aunt is a servant. Angel refuses to visit in such a lowly capacity, but the mansion represents everything she wants, and believes she deserves, from life.

Finding herself utterly unappreciated by the narrow small-town minds around her, she bombards London publishers with her steamy stories until one (Sam Neill) sees her populist potential and takes her on.

Despite refusing to compromise the slightest detail, even to correct such schoolgirl errors as believing that champagne is opened with a corkscrew, her aspirational novels are an instant hit with the public, bringing fame and fortune enough to appease even Angel’s voracious appetite.

Buying Paradise from it’s now-ruined owners, Angel has achieved everything she ever imagined she wanted, but finds a fresh challenge in handsome, dissolute painter Esme (Michael Fassbender, 300).

Taking on his infatuated sister Nora as personal secretary, Angel soon wins herself a husband, but even her single-minded determination cannot overcome war. Esme enlists, loses his leg, and ultimately the will to live.

Having finally lost a battle, Angel’s descent is swift, her books fall out of favour and she ends her days an eccentric, forgotten relic.

Director Ozon’s vision of writer Elizabeth Taylor’s (not that one) 1957 novel is undeniably beautiful, boasting a chocolate-box Edwardian England and lavish costumes to make the BBC drama department green with envy.

However, Angel is intended to satirise the feverish melodramas written by the heroine, but by slavishly adhering to their conventions it comes off as a soulless exercise in style.

And while it is possible to admire Angel for imagining her ideal life and achieving it through sheer willpower, it is still frustrating to spend two hours following the rise and fall of a character who at her best is ridiculous and at her worst downright unpleasant - particularly in the scene where she denies her dying mother the company of her despised aunt.

Angel is worth a look for the spectacle alone, but despite the high drama and relentlessly emotional score, remains an ultimately empty, unsatisfying confection.

Ruth Ford