‘Waiting for the Moon’ (PG-13)

Picture this for dramatic options: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas live together for more than 20 years in Spain and then France. One writes, the other cooks. Everyone from Henri Matisse to F. Scott Fitzgerald visits the American ex-pats for whine and sympathy in their Paris salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Stein, a woman of generous means, becomes quirky earth mother to just about every artist who puts stick to paper between the wars. Her writing is celebrated by some as great literature, pilloried by others as charlatan scrawl. She and Toklas are friends, artists and lovers.

A relationship like that could make for quite a story, you figure.

Uh-uh. Not in this film. "Waiting for the Moon," a fictionalized account of one of the 20th century's most famous couples, exploits none of this potential. And the title's similarity to Samuel Beckett's most famous play seems ironically appropriate: Like Godot, the magic that presumably existed between the two women simply never shows up.

Whether you view this film out of interest in Stein and Toklas, or in the story of a lifelong relationship, you will probably be left hungry. You might leaf through the Toklas cookbook to learn more about them.

In much the same way Stein wrote, director Jill Godmilow and screenwriter Mark Magill create a sequence of expressionistic snapshots of the two women. Thus, we are given a cinematic prance-through-France with improv picnics, literati walk-ons by "Ernest Hemingway" and "Fernande Picasso," rustic chug-arounds in a Model T Ford, shots of Stein's graceful country home and back garden and frequent fadeouts. But just as a scene threatens to illuminate or even entertain, the film changes gear and moves on.

All this pretty paint doesn't disguise a threadbare canvas. The interaction between Toklas (Linda Hunt) and Stein (Linda Bassett), surely the most significant motif for such a film, is light to the point of lite. When, at one point, Toklas asks Stein, "Why are we fighting?," you want to mutter out loud, "That's a damn good question." And there is hardly a whit about their romantic relationship. Stein comes to comfort Toklas, who has awakened from nightmares. She sits in bed with her to hold her. She switches off the light. End of scene. End of the affair.

Ultimately, we never find out why we should be interested in two women who recline grandly in lawn chairs, alluding to matters of life, roses and literature with all the dramatic interest of, say, two bank clerks talking paycheck authorization.

A couple of potentially interesting themes almost surface. Toklas' saintliness is pitted against Stein's stubbornness. Toklas resents Stein for not appreciating her or confiding in her. Stein feels she has the right to remain the way she is. She also withholds the news that she may have a fatal disease. But the saintly-stubborn theme never reaches tension level.

Hunt, as Toklas, battles the lean script to reproduce the idiosyncratic grace she brought to "The Year of Living Dangerously" and "Silverado." But she succeeds here only fitfully. There is one moment in which actress, script and camera combine successfully -- a confession scene with the local priest, in which Toklas discusses her conflicts with Stein. As she explains her problems to the priest with wry, ironic lines, it becomes a veritable shrink session. You get a clear feeling about her anguish, an actual insight. But it's all too brief.

Bassett, who comes to the screen from the British stage, takes a bafflingly subdued approach to the charismatic Stein -- to Bassett, it seems, a line is a line is a line. And Hemingway (performed with gusto by Bruce McGill, who also played D-Day in "Animal House") is splash-painted as a literate redneck, a drunken, sexist bum who makes slurry, disparaging remarks about Stein while calling Toklas a saint. "A Moveable Feast" this ain't. But Godmilow and Magill have not constrained themselves with fact or literature. Indeed, there's very little about Stein's or Toklas' works -- a couple of proofreading sessions as they go over "A Rose, Alice" in le backyard is pretty much all we see of their oeuvres.

Although Andre Neau's camera works with a pleasing palette, it anchors itself all too squarely on people's faces -- perhaps because this film was produced in association with European television stations. There is one pleasing moment, in the opening sequence, when the camera tracks around the chairs of the two women as they sit on the lawn. But then it keeps circling.

Which sums up the film's attitude. There is too much premature reverence in this film. The filmmakers have convinced themselves of the worthiness of these two characters -- but they've forgotten to convince the viewers.

Waiting for the Moon, at the Circle West End, is rated PG-13.