FROM Georgian director Dover Koshashvili, using Mary Bing’s screenplay from a novella by Anton Chekov, Croatian interior and exterior locations and a cast drawn mainly from British TV, this quite lovely and engaging film entertains more than makes any significant statement.

Its conflicts unfold in low levels of intimacy and tension. Holidaying in the Caucasus, Laevsky (Andrew Scott) gets a letter notifying him of the death of his live-in paramour’s husband. He throws a wobbly. He must get away quickly. He doesn’t show the letter to Nadia (Fiona Glascott).

Laevsky is a complex, weak, not particularly likeable character, whose perception of life’s apparent purpose is cards, wine and rutting with Nadia (who probably enjoys it, without indicating one way or the other). His acquaintances include a physician of noble ancestry and probably gay, a dilettante anxious to help him deal with his problems and Von Koren, much taken by the ideas in “On the Origin of Species”.

Von Koren despises Laevsky. Maria, a neighbour with a restrained view of society, finds Nadia’s situation intolerable. The local police chief lusts after Nadia.

Here is a community of folk driven by hedonism, little aware of the world beyond their group. Forming judgements about their behaviour is probably less rewarding than simply accepting it and enjoying Koshashvili’s inclusion of enchanting images that don’t advance the story, but give great pleasure.

 At Greater Union