These Foolish Things review

The curtain can’t fall fast enough on this inept potboiler about a plucky gal who dreams of treading the boards in ’30s London. First-time writer/director Julia Taylor-Stanley may have enticed Lauren Bacall, Terence Stamp and Anjelica Huston to prop up her yarn, but she can’t do much with material that’s half Mrs Henderson, half Bright Young Things and all Barbara Cartland.

Zoe Tapper plays the virginal heroine, gingerly negotiating unsuitable suitors in her attempts to emulate her famed actress mum. The competing attentions of Andrew Lincoln’s good-egg director and David Leon’s struggling playwright lead to a wan romantic triangle. But what drama Taylor-Stanley manages to wring is subsidiary to the frocks and fittings shoehorned into this low-budget affair to appeal to the American market. Foolish indeed.