CAPSULE: A Quiet Passion (2016, Dir. Terence Davies)

Arthouse pond-crossing is all the rage at the moment. America's Whit Stillman recently took his love of Jane Austen to quite literal extremes, now Britain's most British of directors, Terence Davies, has crossed the Atlantic to delve into the hideaway existence of 19th century poet Emily Dickinson.

They are, of course, still both very much on brand. Stillman knocked his out of the park. Davies' attempt isn't as unparalleled a success. Actually, through the director's recognisably arch framing (flowers, windows and impeccable lighting), strains a near Stillman-esque propensity to preposterous loquaciousness. Davies' screenplay for A Quiet Passion comprises almost entirely of aphorisms and epigrams, more often than not contained within a well-dressed vignette, positioned to best display some facet or other of the poet's notoriously private life.

With Davies' episodic, chamber-bound approach and Dickinson's fiercely capricious demeanour (slammed out with both fire and beatitude by Cynthia Nixon), A Quiet Passion narrows its target audience to a specific subset of Dickinson devotees - namely those who are as obsessed as Davies himself.

For those on the outer, A Quiet Passion offers a mix of stunning cinematography, soaring visual transcendence and frustratingly opaque verbal cleverness, often delivered with comic panache. But it doesn't comes together with the artistic coherence of Davies' previous work or with the thematic development needed to press this past artful representation.

A diverting museum piece.

★★★

Trailer: