According to Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, the gay poet and dramatist, had been "madly in love" with him, but the affair was never consummated.

Whatever the truth of the matter (Dalí would say just about anything to get a reaction - or for money),Little Ashes screenwriter Philippa Goslett has taken this, and the pair's supposed innuendo-laced correspondence, as the starting block for a torrid melodrama about forbidden love and artistic integrity, sketching in the details until the facts become as pliant as one of Dalí's timepieces.

The year is 1922, the city is Madrid, and three creative geniuses just happen to be lodging together in student digs while unleashing a firestorm of modernity upon the world. The first act of the film has fun presenting a portrait of the artists as young dogs. Or in Federico's case, an Andalusian one; he later claimed surrealist wind-up Un Chien Andalou was a personal attack on him by his former chums.

Here's bolshie Buñuel (Matthew McNulty),upbraiding Lorca (Javier Beltrán) for not being more of a modernist. And here's a "strategically placed copy of Freud" on somebody's desk. So which one's Dalí? Oh, there he is, a pale, effete lad, more stick insect than Catalan, pulling up to the doors of the Residencia in lace sleeves, knee-high boots and a poncy page-boy haircut. You can always spot those first-year art students a mile off, can't you?

If Lorca's the wound, Buñuel's the scab. And Dalí (Robert Pattinson) is trying so hard to be edgy and out there he loses sight of the fact he naturally is. The three consolidate their friendships, and as is often the way with trios, Buñuel pin-balls between Lorca and Dalí, who have initially become far closer. How close? Well, let's just hope the homophobic Buñuel doesn't find out about it. Caramba! Too late.

Although Little Ashes concerns artists and the artistic impulse, it's not what you'd call an 'art movie', sharing more DNA with, say, Lust For Life than 1991's Van Gogh. At its best, it does a good job of showing how it feels to navigate that tricky passage between late adolescence and early-twenties.

But as a would-be penetrating expose, it's too polite, too compromised and stagy. Perhaps owing to its modest £1.4m budget, it looks - and sounds (everyone ees speekeeng like thees) like a teleplay, featuring stilted dialogue and heavy-handed symbolism, such as a scene of a heartbroken Lorca transposed with that of a slain bull in the ring.

In the reductive way of biopics, Lorca's a sap, Dalí's a brat, and Buñuel's a yob. Beltrán elegantly conveys the poet's raw sensitivity ("like an animal that's been skinned" as Dalí puts it),though can't quite pull off his celebrated magnetism; the film would rather he fulfill his role as passive victim. Love interest Robert Pattinson is perhaps not yet old enough to play the bug-eyed dandy with the upside-down mustache, an exemplar of John Updike's aphorism that "Fame is a mask that eats into the face". Yet his grasp of Dalí-esquire tics and gestures suggest natural comic ability. He's wasted on those fantasy movies; he should play Buster Keaton.

For his part, Matthew McNulty is saddled with the sketchiest, and for dramatic reasons, least sympathetic role as the bullish homophobe. Anyone wishing to get a fuller picture of his Residencia days should be directed to his autobiography 'My Last Breath', in which he says of Lorca, "Of all the human beings I've ever known, Federico was the finest."

For the sake of argument, let us suppose an affair did occur, outside of Dalí's febrile imagination. However, by getting bogged down in a tease of a romance, the drama sidesteps the prevailing politics - vital to a real appreciation of the artists' anti-establishment stance, and all but cruises past the Spanish Civil War. Lorca's arrest and murder by fascist firing squad is predictably soft-pedaled, with the camera discretely pulling away from the forensics of his notorious dispatch.

Ultimately, Little Ashes, a piece of commercial entertainment made on the other side of the twentieth century, lacks the courage of its case studies' convictions. This is most clearly illustrated by how far it's prepared to go in one direction, but not the other. In the movie's most hysterical scene, a self-loathing Lorca beds the unhappy Margarita (Marina Gatell) as a substitute Dalí, while the distraught painter voyeuristically watches.

Whether the incident has any basis in reality or not, it's integral to the dramatic arc, and extremely graphic - nudging hardcore. Yet to portray this, in such prurient detail, but not its homosexual flip side - the poet attempting and failing to consummate a relationship with the painter (whether it happened or not),seems cowardly, and indicative of that bourgeois morality the film's subjects were doing their damndest to smash through.

Three of the most admired men of the last century are the subject of "Little Ashes". The trio of Spaniards first meet while at the university; they come together as they begin their career in the arts. Of course they are, Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, Federico Garcia Lorca, considered to be Spain's greatest poet, and Luis Bunuel, a film director that delighted audiences with his art films that followed the canons of the surrealist movement.

Federico Garcia Lorca, a gay poet, develops an attraction for Salvador Dali, a painter, whose sexuality is left to the audience's imagination. Unfortunately, Federico, a left wing sympathizer, experienced frustration with the way Salvador would not commit to the kind of love he felt for the painter. It comes clear that Garcia Lorca kept to his ideas, giving his own life in the end, while selfish Salvador Dali gave up everything he once aspired to be becoming a parody of himself leading a ridiculous life where he embraced fascism, and ultimately ended up as a society clown for the idle rich. Luis Bunuel's life is a second thought for the creators of the film.

Directed by Paul Morrison, "Little Ashes" could have been much involving. Written by Philippa Goslett, the story takes liberties with the way in the treatment of the three figures it tries to showcase. Part of the problem might be the heavily accented English Mr. Morrison insisting in having his actors speak. Somehow, it feels false, as it tends to disorient the audience.

Robert Pattinson, the hero of the vampire saga, made this film before he was chosen to play Edward Culle, who is the main character in Stephanie Meyers novels. He does an impressive take on his Dali, an eccentric man, indeed. Jorge Beltran plays Garcia Lorca and Matthew McNulty appears as Luis Bunuel.

There are many reasons to see this film, not the least of which is the continuing fascination with the subject of the story. Three of Spain's brightest artists of the first part of the 20th century each had live that have fascinated readers and historians for decades. While this 'quasi-accurate' biographical script by Philippa Goslett is not the definitive documentary many have been waiting for, at least it is a wild quilt of bits and pieces of each of the artists' creative lives - and some of their private lives as well.

1922, Spain, and the art school in Madrid is ripe with talent: poet/playwright Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltrán) has already published some of his poems, Luis Buñuel (Matthew McNulty) is more involved with the political festering of fascism and what will become Franco's Spain than he is with concentrating on the brilliant films he will eventually make, and the newly arrived Salvador Dalí (Robert Pattinson) is making visually shocking entrances in wild clothing while rebelling against the current fads in art. The three bond, encouraged by the writer Magdalena (Marina Gatell) who merely wants to become not only a famous feminist writer but also a part of the obvious changes in art these three men represent.

The sexuality of García Lorca is clear: he finds himself drawn to the creative but peculiar Dalí. Dalí's preferences seem to include both men and women and as their beautiful friendship evolves it is Dalí who ultimately runs to Paris out of self-doubt and homophobia. Madrid may be avant-garde, but there is a strong anti-gay contingent (including oddly enough Buñuel) and the discord politically and artistically forces many to flee to Paris, the mecca of art. The bruised and rejected García Lorca finds solace in his creation of a traveling theater for his own plays while Dalí marries Gala in Paris and completes the famous film 'The Andalusian Dog' with Buñuel. When the three men (and Magdalena) eventually meet again some years later the world has changed, even if old feelings haven't.

If the story sounds disconnected, it is. There are some very beautiful scenes from director Paul Morrison: a scene with García Lorca and Dalí in an almost underwater ballet is sensuous and beautifully photographed. Javier Beltrán is a sensitive actor and does well with the little he has to work with as García Lorca. Robert Pattinson can't quite find the level of the bizarre personality of Dalí - it would take a really fine actor to accomplish this. But the general casting is good. The editing of this movie is some of the worse on record (Rachel Tunnard) and that factors in a problem with the flow of the film. But for a diversion and another look at the arts in the early 20th century, LITTLE ASHES is entertaining. It could have been so much better.

Grady Harp