That "Summer in February" begins with a pristine shot of the English coast and good-looking fellows riding horseback along its surf, all to the swells of Benjamin Wallfisch's string-ridden score, says a lot about why the romantic drama is a complete snoozer. Based on the novel of the same name by Jonathan Smith, the movie relies on the beauty of its setting and actors to make us believe in the tragedy of Florence Carter-Wood (Emily Browning), an aspiring artist, who marries bad-boy painter "AJ" Munnings (Dominic Cooper) even though her heart really belongs to Gilbert Evans (Dan Stevens), a chivalrous soldier. Poor Florence. What's a girl to do?

Director Christopher Manuel and Smith, who adapted the movie's screenplay, chronicle the answers to that question with exceptional blandness. Half of the love story's tension comes from its exploitation of history: AJ is based on British artist, Alfred Munnings, who in 1912, married 24 year old Carter-Wood after they met on a small art colony near Cornwall. The other half comes from its cloying shots of cliffs, waves, and cottages, not to mention the perennial widening of Browning's pretty yet guileless eyes. Such tension is pure window dressing for the already decorative nature of British cultural heritage. I suggest you save your empty calories for the next adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. At least those are drawn from a cagier source material.