IRWIN Winkler's handsome musical biopic of legendary American composer Cole Porter doesn't quite live up to its effusive title.

Part fact, part imagined, the film paints a colourful portrait of one of the world's greatest songwriters, including more than 30 of his songs.

Porter (Kevin Kline) sits alone in his apartment in 1964 New York, playing a familiar, melancholic tune on his piano.

The angel Gabriel (Jonathan Pryce) appears and encourages the gravely ill composer to look back on his extraordinary life.

And so familiar faces from Porter's past - including his wife Linda (Ashley Judd) and family, friends and lovers - appear on a makeshift stage to re-enact key scenes.

Beginning in a Paris salon in the 1920s where Cole meets Linda for the first time, the film skips and frolics through more than 40 years of laughter and heartache.

Cole and Linda fall in love: she is dazzled by his wit and talent, and he regards her as a steadfast companion to nurture him through his darkest periods.

Crucially, Linda is seen to be completely au fait with Cole's secret, closeted life.

"You know then, that I have other interests," he remarks. "Like men," she replies coolly.

So Cole continues to conduct his same-sex affairs behind closed doors, at a time when homosexuality was taboo, while Linda basks in his greatness.

However, the composer's unapologetic promiscuity and Linda's increasing loneliness gradually tear the marriage apart, culminating in a riding accident that brings down the curtain on Porter's love affair with musical theatre.

De-Lovely beautifully recreates the glittering parties and finery of the Jazz Age and screenwriter Jay Cocks pulls few punches about Porter's sexuality, in stark contrast to the heavily sanitised 1946 feature Night And Day with Cary Grant and Alexis Smith.

Kline has a delicious rakish quality as the hedonistic composer and he puts his musical skills to good use at the piano.

However, there's very little romantic spark with Judd, undermining the central idea that Linda was the one love of Cole's life.

The clumsy framing device does the film few favours, proving a constant distraction, and some of the modern re-interpretations of the Porter songbook - by the likes of Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Diane Krall and Robbie Williams - are, frankly, de-plorable.

Damon Smith

See it at UCI