Its imagery is therefore fundamentally second-hand, but that in itself need not be a criticism, just as it would be absurd to criticise Chanel's paste jewellery for looking fake.There is, for example, a repeated shot of Maggie Cheung returning home along a nocturnal back-street with a swaying noodle-bucket in her hand. Visually, the street is nothing to write home about, the noodles are ordinary take-away noodles and Cheung herself, even if she wears a different flower-patterned cheongsam in practically every scene (though why not? The narrative seems to be unfolding over a period of weeks), is attractive without being eye-distendingly yummy. Yet the cinema has shown us nothing as deliriously chic since a high-heeled Marlene Dietrich sashayed into the Sahara in Josef von Sternberg's rococo Morocco.How does Wong do it? The boarding-house in which much of the story takes place is drab, its occupants are never more than averagely personable specimens of lower-middle class humanity and, were it not for certain obvious linguistic differences, the shipping office in which Mrs Chan is employed as a secretary could be transposed intact into a Ken Loach film. Yet, somehow, In the Mood for Love, shimmeringly photographed by the inevitable Christopher Doyle, is drenched in gorgeousness. It's as though the glamour traditionally invested in a star has this time been expended on an entire film; as though, in just the way other directors' cameras are said to "love" their leading actresses, Wong's camera loves the whole world. Or planet.A film in which every shot is exquisite, however, resembles a pack of cards solely composed of kings, queens and jacks.

The problem with In the Mood for Love is that its imagery has far too many face-cards and not enough twos and fives and eights, which, boring as they are, nevertheless constitute the indispensable nitty-gritty of narrative As I mention above, the plot goes nowhere. Or, rather, in a strange closing section, it goes to Phnom Penh, for a scene in which Wong maladroitly endeavours to plug his melancholy little romance into the cosmos itself. It can be done - in the 1950s, Rossellini succeeded, movingly, with the climaxes of Stromboli and Viaggio in Italia - but Wong unquestionably botches it.And why, on what is otherwise a very musical soundtrack, do we never once hear that lovely old standard, "In the Mood for Love"?. On Thursday night, after a sell-out run in San Diego, the stage version of The Full Monty opened on Broadway. Back in London, producers and cast of the epic new musical Napoleon are still reeling from last week's critical savaging.

From workers taking their clothes off to the coronation of the French Emperor, musicals keep pouring out in ever more unlikely shapes and sizes. On Thursday night, after a sell-out run in San Diego, the stage version of The Full Monty opened on Broadway. Back in London, producers and cast of the epic new musical Napoleon are still reeling from last week's critical savaging. From workers taking their clothes off to the coronation of the French Emperor, musicals keep pouring out in ever more unlikely shapes and sizes. Just take a glance at the current crop Three East Coast divorcees get seduced by a devilish figure. A group of Belfast teenagers play football against a background of sectarian violence. A small Corsican rises from obscurity to become the most powerful man in the world.

How could you possibly tell which of them would succeed and which of them would flop?The Witches of Eastwick has been acclaimed as "devilishly funny", The Beautiful Game as Andrew Lloyd Webber's "finest piece of musical theatre ever" and Napoleon described as "tosh", "cartoon-history", "a veritable mish-mash of triteness, clichés and dodgy rhymes", and "preposterous even by the standards of big, sentimental musicals".There may be students of history who think Napoleon's most decisive moment was routing the Austrians and Russians at the battle of Austerlitz, but for the writers of the musical Napoleon the world was changed "for ever" when their lead character first asked Josephine to dance.It's a reminder that the success of a musical doesn't lie in the subject itself but in how you choose to present it. Puccini tried to set Oliver Twist to music, but it was Lionel Bart who gave us Oliver!The Dome should really be playing host to an exhibition of the great bad musicals. It would want to include extracts from Moby Dick, which had a school group trying to stage a production of Melville's novel in a swimming pool; Bernadette, the story of a peasant girl who saw visions at Lourdes in 1844; and The Fields of Ambrosia about a travelling executioner in the Deep South who falls in love with his first female client. If there was space - and there would be at the Dome - you would want to see bits from The Hunting of the Snark by Mike Batt, composer of "Remember You're A Wom-ble", the Norwegian pop opera Which Witch? and the RSC's production of Stephen King's novel Carrie, which inspired a book about theatrical disasters called Not Since Carrie.But the successes sound just as preposterous as the flops. When Trevor Nunn was rehearsing Cats he found that colleagues in the theatre could barely disguise their amusement at the seeming badness of the idea of a musical based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats Evita didn't sound very appealing either One person who wasn't keen was Andrew Lloyd Webber. He had just done Jesus Christ Superstar and didn't want to do another show about an unknown who rises to fame aged 33, and then dies.The book-writer and lyricist Michael Stewart, whose credits include Hello, Dolly!, 42nd Street and Barnum, used to give lectures on transatlantic cruises One of his first tips was: Work with Someone who is Dead. The great advantage of collaborating with Shakespeare, Dickens or Victor Hugo is that they don't get tricky at creative meetings.