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The reserved austerity that's the trademark of producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has served the creative team of filmmakers well in one drawing room drama after another, including such classics as A Room with a View (1986) and Howards End (1992). However, that same quality of British stoicism is the Achilles' heel of this historical drama that possesses all the trappings of the trio's established oeuvre, but lacks the passion it's trying gracefully to skirt. The character of Thomas Jefferson never really comes to life. Nick Nolte plays him as he's written, an empty vessel into which literally any idea or belief could be ascribed. The scholarship of Jhabvala's script is hardly in doubt; she even cleverly works several famed Jefferson pronouncements ("It is in the company of a friend that nature wears its liveliest hue") into the narrative flow. The problem is that the inner life of the man is never explored in any penetrating way; whenever anything interesting is about to happen, Jefferson pulls away both physically and emotionally, or director Ivory merely cuts away from the action. Thandie Newton seems lost in the role of Sally Hemmings, never quite sure whether she's playing a woman or a girl, a simpleton or a schemer. There are many hints at the interesting film that could have (and by all rights should have) resulted here, especially the depiction of a handful of Jefferson's opinions regarding the French elite and the burning desire for respect of Sally's brother James, played soulfully by Seth Gilliam. These moments are too few, however. The rest of Jefferson in Paris is opaque and frustrating, a puzzle composed of pieces that have been fit together incorrectly, leaving the viewer unenlightened and only marginally entertained.