One is a middle-aged divorcee, exiled from Manhattan's upper crust to Italy's Amalfi Coast after a notorious adultery scandal.

Scarlett Johansson stars in "A Good Woman." 'A Good Woman' Rating: PG for thematic material, sensuality and language. Starring: Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson. Director: Mike Barker. "A Good Woman" web site

The other is a conservative young wife, blissfully committed to her husband and convinced she's safely locked into the "perfect marriage."

Between them stands a hunky young husband struggling to hide his secret "arrangement" with the divorcee from his wife, the only one in their gossipy little resort town who doesn't know.

Oh, the drama.

Oscar Wilde loved this stuff. As much as he claimed to loathe the chattering upper class, he hated even more when their salacious gossip wasn't about him. His classic romantic comedy, "Lady Windemere's Fan," provided the inspiration for Howard Himelstein's screenplay "A Good Woman." Director Mike Barker sets the period piece in Italy between the wars, a time when the only people not struggling through the Great Depression were the privileged European royalty and American socialites summering on the Italian coast, sipping French champagne and gossiping about each other's dalliances.

Barker couldn't have recruited a better cast. Helen Hunt stars as the cosmopolitan Mrs. Erlynne, who's never held a job and couldn't hold a husband but somehow always finds the patronage to finance a stylish wardrobe and carefree lifestyle. Men can't keep their eyes off her. Women want to beat her with a stick.

With a pouting face and clear-skinned youthfulness, Scarlett Johansson is the perfect debutante. Her naive Meg Windermere has good looks and parentage that have kept her oblivious to the sometimes seedy ways of the world. Mark Umbers, as her husband, has the classically chiseled features and grace of movement that we like to associate with old money, and Tom Wilkinson is simply a great actor wisely cast as the aging fourth corner in a love triangle that has captivated lurid imaginations all over town.

Himelstein steals a world-class twist from Wilde regarding the nature of the little "arrangement" linking the husband and the divorcee. It's too bad that Himelstein isn't a world-class writer. His dialogue is too often flat or strained, even when the characters are interesting and some of the actors are quite good. Without the wit of Wilde, the updated romantic comedy loses its humor and lumbers as a laborious romance.