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Colette’s “Gigi” was twice adapted for the screen—first in 1948, the second time as Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-winning 1958 musical—so it’s not surprising that somebody should have decided to take on her two earlier novels about Cheri. They’re sort of a gender-reverse take on the Gigi story: instead of a girl being trained as a courtesan who captures the heart of a respectable man, the Cheri books are about the handsome young son of an ex-courtesan who becomes the lover of one of his mother’s erstwhile colleagues, an older but still voluptuous woman who pines for him (as he does for her) after his mother arranges a marriage with a more age-appropriate girl.

There are a couple of major differences between Minnelli’s “Gigi” and “Cheri,” though. There’s no music, which is a blessing if it avoided a number called “Thank Heaven for Little Boys.” And the tone is much less frothy, especially toward the close (though the 1948 non-musical “Gigi” was less sanitized). Most importantly, however, “Gigi” was delightful, and “Cheri” is a numbingly wrong-headed period piece that misfires on virtually all cylinders.

That’s somewhat of a surprise, given that it’s the work of writer Christopher Hampton and director Stephen Frears, who previously collaborated on the wickedly witty “Dangerous Liaisons” (1988). One senses problems immediately at the start, as the picture begins with narration (spoken by Frears himself) that sets the stage of La Belle Epoque, the period at the beginning of the last century when the story is set. Frears will pop up periodically throughout, either to fill in narrative gaps or to explain the motivations of characters, a crutch that indicates he and Hampton never succeeded in transforming the material into cinematic terms.

That’s made abundantly clear by the emotional emptiness at the center of the picture, a failure to invest either Cheri or his lover Lea with real emotional heft. And that’s compounded by casting that accentuates the problem. Cheri is a remarkably vapid figure to begin with—Lea rightly notes at one point that it’s difficult to criticize his character because he doesn’t have any—but though Rupert Friend wears the period clothes well and strikes all the proper poses, he’s not classically handsome (with an angular face topped by a mop of long hair that looks ridiculous when he plops a top hat on); and when he does emote—which is rarely, as he’s a pretty undemonstrative fellow—all he seems capable of registering is adolescent petulance.

And even if that’s the point, it’s hard to believe that any woman would develop a deep attachment to him, especially since Michelle Pfeiffer’s Lea is so wooden and stilted. Theoretically, she’s right for the part: she’s still radiantly beautiful, and like Friend, she looks great in her magnificent costumes. But whenever she tries to show Lea’s feelings—pained reactions whenever her absent lover is mentioned, mostly—the result is almost embarrassingly amateurish. Because she and Friend never register as real human beings, there’s a hole at the center of “Cheri,” which would be fine is it were intended as nothing more than a nasty romp. But it isn’t: we’re told (by the narrator, of course) that these two people were destined for one another, the one true love for each, and that their separation doomed them both. But the picture never successfully transmits that, except in empty words.

At the other end of the thespian spectrum are Kathy Bates as Cheri’s mother and Felicity Jones as his mousy wife. In an apparent effort to inject some life into the proceedings, Bates goes full throttle, guffawing loudly like a turn-of-the-century version of Charlotte Haze (her name is Charlotte, too). Though her act can earn some smiles, it’s as though she’d stepped in from another picture entirely. Jones, meanwhile, goes the ultra-serious route, almost disappearing in the process. The remaining roles are mere throwaways, and the actors in them more notable for their clothes than their performances.

Which brings us to the one strength of “Cheri”—the picture’s look. The attention to detail in the work of production Alan Macdonald, art director Mark Raggett and costume designer Consolata Boyle is impressive. The widescreen cinematography by Darius Kgondji is elegant. And the score by Alexandre Desplat, while not his best work, injects some badly-needed exuberance with its mixture of strings and tiny bells. (At least in the print I saw, however, the overall sound was rather muffled.)

And looks alone can’t rescue a picture so vacuous at the core. What “Cheri” needed was a gossamer touch with suggestions of dark undercurrents; but Hampton and Frears prove heavy-handed, and their clumsiness is magnified by the missteps of the cast. Colette’s novels are hardly great works of literature, but while “Gigi” transcended its source, this movie doesn’t even manage to match the books it’s been adapted from.