Rating:

For many, the Charles Sturridge TV epic that launched the career of Jeremy Irons will be forever the canonical version of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel that lightly satirizes the social savagery of the civilized, and gravely witnesses these aristocrats' faith.

Julian Jarrold's adaptation (Brideshead Revisited revisited?) arrives on screen at a brisk 135 minutes, telescoping events that Sturridge microscoped.

The film is plush and passionate and graced with elegant performances. Best is that of Emma Thompson as Brideshead's matriarch, Lady Marchmain, who resembles a cross between Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict.

As it interprets rather than illustrates the novel, the new Brideshead is bound to be controversial among lit purists. Where in the mini-series the homosexuality of Sebastian Flyte was implied, here it is underlined. (In this, according to news reports, the tweaks by screenwriters Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies had the blessing of the Waugh estate.)

As painter Charles Ryder, a hopelessly middle-class atheist perhaps more infatuated with the Flytes' Brideshead castle than he is with the people who live there, Matthew Goode easily slips into Irons' oxfords.

The watchful actor, so excellent in Match Point, plays Charles with a self-effacing smile and covetous eyes. It's as though he thinks by staring hard enough at Old Master paintings and sculptures, he can swallow them. Goode suggests that Charles' lust for Flyte possessions manifests as a lust for the Flytes themselves.

Ben Whishaw (lately of Perfume) plays the aristocratic Sebastian, doubly isolated by his Catholicism and his homosexuality (the latter implicit in the mini-series, and explicit here), as a neglected rag doll.

In exchange for the pleasure of Charles' company, Sebastian gifts him with flowers, champagne, oysters and invitations to Brideshead (Castle Howard, likewise used in the mini-series). There, Charles meets the formidable Lady Marchmain, pious and pitiless, and her daughter, Julia (Hayley Atwell), lush and luscious.

There are many forms of temptation in Waugh's saga that overlays the romantic triangle of Julia, Sebastian and Charles with the religious trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Where Jarrold (Becoming Jane) does his best to tease out the knotty threads of flesh and faith, the spiritual elements of the story are less-developed than the sensual. And because this is so, Brideshead falls a few feet short of the profound.

Brideshead Revisited *** (out of four stars)

Directed by Julian Jarrold, written by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, distributed by Miramax Films. With Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw, Hayley Atwell and Emma Thompson.

Running time: 2 hours, 15 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual content, mature themes).

Showing at: Ritz Five and Showcase at the Ritz Center.