Pitching itself firmly at the Fifty Shades of Grey crowd, this new release of the 2002 version of the classic erotic novel might well find an audience amongst people who like their BDSM to be safe and politically correct and who cling to the idea that all it needs to straighten out a man's kinky tastes is the right woman. For the rest of us, this will seem pretty limp stuff.

The film very loosely adapts the story of the novel – Danielle Ciardi is O (in this case, her actual name rather than a depersonalising reference) is a photographer who needs money to complete a book of dreadful erotic photographs, and is introduced by her personality-free tennis pro boyfriend Rene (Max Parrish) to wealthy deviant Sir Stephen (Neil Dickson), an irritatingly foppish BDSM enthusiast who offers to finance her in exchange for her sexual obedience. As the story slowly – very slowly – develops, the relationship between them becomes ever more complicated / annoying.

There is plenty to take exception to here. Sir Stephen is such a pathetic wimp that you can't possibly take the idea of him as a spanking and whipping enthusiast seriously – indeed, the final 'torture' scene is so laughably feeble, and his reaction so pathetic, that it's no wonder that – mild spoiler for those who care – the tables would seem to be turned at the end of the film.

O, on the other hand, is equally annoying. The whole basis of the story, the who potency of its erotic charge, is that O has agreed to be completely, utterly submissive to the desires of her master – any act of rebellion, any argument is punished severely. But here, despite making an agreement, O is argumentative, demanding, rebellious and downright irritating, with only the mildest of rebukes (it goes without saying that the BDSM scene in the film are mostly the sort of soft focus lightweight flagellations you would expect to find in an earnest sex education video). This might help sell the film to a vanilla audience who have been turned on to non-scary kink by a series of lousy novels, but it's hardly what we'd expect from The Story of O. Indeed, after this film, you find yourself with a new-found appreciation for Just Jaekin's 1975 version, itself a wimped out adaptation of the novel.

Danielle Ciardi just doesn't work as O. She's good looking and has a great body, but she's just not sexy, and it's hard to see her as this unobtainable object of desire that would bring a powerful man to his knees. Then again, Dickson is equally unconvincing as Sir Stephen, his performance too limp and emotive. As for the supporting cast – well, let's not get into that. Suffice to say that the film doesn't have any stand out performances.

There are some inadvertent laughs to be had – when Sir Stephen looks over O's truly awful photography and pronounces her a great talent, it's hard not to snigger. Presumably the budget didn't stretch to hiring a decent photographer to provide some stills, or perhaps director Phil Leirness really does think that flatly shot images of a silicone-enhanced body-painted model are the height of erotic power.

There are brief moments that work – the odd erotic set-up, an occasional hint of eroticism – but they are snippets within a whole, still frame moments that are gone as quickly as they appear. On the whole, this is very bland erotica, and there is nothing worse to be said about a film based on one the the most potently, darkly erotic novels ever written. People who find BDSM (or sex with the lights on) a bit scary might find this shocking, but everyone else will probably consider it to be too tame by far.

DAVID FLINT

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