Those who saw Patrice Chereau's staging of Marivaux's play La dispute in the 1970s will agree it's apt that Mozart's bittersweet comedy should be the vehicle for this director's return to opera in 2005. The production is full of strokes of near-genius from old (Chereau, his regular set designer Richard Peduzzi, his photogenic Don Alfonso, Ruggero Raimondi), not so old (Barbara Bonney's unhackneyed Despina) and new (Daniel Harding - a thrilling Mozart conductor on the wing - Elina Garanca's Dorabella, and the men) but, at least as filmed here, is often less than the sum of its parts.

In Act 1 Chereau and Peduzzi rely too often on clichés. The fact that they're their own clichés - an aesthetic that they invented - may only worry those who know their stagings well. They design an empty theatrical space with 18th-century Noh theatre actors as providers of props and furniture and a huge (and distracting) “No Smoking” instruction on the back wall, perhaps a reference to their first Mozart success in early-1970s Spoleto. Blocking tics from the Bayreuth Ring and other shows abound - the chain of people going nowhere just before the boys leave for supposed military service, the painters' scaffold that takes them there, the endless running around and singing in the “wrong” directions. All the while, there's a very serious intent here and a studiedly conscious recreation of 18th-century patterns in both costumes (Caroline de Vivaise) and movement that compels admiration.

After the interval Chereau, always a compelling observer of sexual love, comes into his element. The comic/erotic balance of the boys' success with the others' girls is brilliantly detailed. The 18th-century quotes seem more integrated. The last scene - helped by Bonney's well acted shock and breakdown when Despina realises she's been duped too - is dark but, significantly, not twisted out of shape to fit an intellectual conceit. All end up in a kind of exhausted, nervous embrace.

Musically, things are also mixed. The best of Harding's Così is as earthily thrilling (and pungent) as his Giovanni and recent Zauberflöte; elsewhere this is work-in-progress, but his Klemperer-on-original-instruments approach is appealing. Erin Wall is stretched by both Fiordiligi's big set-pieces but acts them with conviction. Raimondi compensates for an inevitable lack of pure voice by charismatic phrasing and acting. The men are good - a nice combination of character and virtuosity; Garanca and Bonney are exceptional.

Mixed down by Arte TV channel from four “live” performances (and filmed rather bumpily), the soundtrack does not always sync with what you see, but it's a distraction you soon forget. An important record of a major occasion but, perhaps, one that was immortalised a little too early.