"The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" was made from a screenplay written by Tennessee Williams in 1957. Unfortunately, the film does little to suggest the script's decades of neglect was unwarranted.

When Williams wrote "Teardrop Diamond," his "Streetcar Named Desire" had already been turned from play to film and his "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" would be transferred to the big screen in 1958, and "Suddenly, Last Summer" the year after.

That we should now, decades later, have a fresh, unmade Williams film might be cause for celebration and a few exuberant Stanley Kowalski impressions. "Teardrop Diamond" is also unique among Williams' works in being written purely as a film.

Elia Kazan, so often Williams' collaborator, supposedly passed on making the film. It sat dormant ever since, though it was published in a collection in the 1980s.

It's difficult to know if the failings of "Teardrop Diamond" are due to the material itself (which one suspects) or its late, worshipful creation (also likely a factor). At any rate, actress Jodie Markell, making her feature film directorial debut, has apparently stayed very close to the script.

Set in Memphis in the 1920s, the film stars Bryce Dallas Howard as Fisher Willow, a Sorbonne-educated heiress who has been summoned back from Europe by her great aunt (a barely utilized Ann-Margret) in Memphis to attend debutante balls. She convinces the son of her father's caretaker, Jimmy Dobyne (Chris Evans), to escort her through these high society parties.

Willow is a classic Williams heroine: sexual, melodramatic, unbalanced and headed for disaster. Our first glimpse of her is her boozily swaying alone on a blues bar dance floor, clutching a bottle of liquor.

She storms through the debutante balls, declaring "propriety is a waste of time" and that Memphis society "bores me to blazes." She's something of an outcast because her father is a villain to Memphis having years earlier killed two men in an accident at a levee.

Willow soon begins to fall for Dobyne even though he couldn't be more boring. He's nearly mute for the first half of the film. Evans seems content to get by on his chiseled looks _ they're at least enough for Dobyne to win attention from Willow and an old flame (Jessica Collins).

Most of the film takes place at one eventful party where Willow loses a $5,000 teardrop diamond earring. Whether she'll find it is about the sum of the drama. Willow's larger battle is to keep herself together and win Dobyne. (Ellen Burstyn also plays a small part as a dying Southern belle.)