“I usually hate these kinds of films. Merchant Ivory films put me out like a light,” Australian director Stephan Elliott said with a theatrical roll of his eyes. Nevertheless, he’s adapted Noel Coward’s 1924 play Easy Virtue into a comedy of manners that promises to relaunch his career.

Elliott peaked early with his debut film. The glam jubilee The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a riotous tale of three drag queens road-tripping across the outback, was a global hit in 1994. Elliott was a celebrity at 29, and his efforts at a worthy follow-up were epic flops.

Disenchanted, he went on an extended vacation in 2004 and skied off a cliff in France. The doctor noted his broken back, shattered legs and fractured pelvis and declared he had 10 minutes to live. Elliott decided otherwise. Eighteen months later, largely rebuilt with titanium parts, he was walking. Last year he began skiing again, and was ready to tackle Easy Virtue.

Elliott reworked the melodrama into a light, sparkling period comedy. “When I first read it, I thought this is brutal, ruthless, not funny. This is not the Coward that I know and love,” Elliott said. England’s Ealing Studios, which held the rights, approached Elliott “because they wanted something subversive, and they got it,” said his writing partner Sheridan Jobbins.

They discarded 70 percent of Coward’s work and reimagined the story in terms of youth appeal. Elliott’s rewrite satirizes the irrelevant gentry and celebrates the sexy, independent virtues of the Roaring Twenties. Jessica Biel plays a glamorous American adventuress who weds a wellborn Englishman (Ben Barnes), only to find that his mother (Kristin Scott-Thomas) is out to sabotage their marriage.

Shooting in wintry England was miserable. “Four and a half hours of light, minus 3,000 degrees, cameras freezing!” On the third day of shooting Elliott slipped and landed on his back. “That night I was in the hospital going into convulsions and we couldn’t tell the production.

“A week in I thought I can’t do this. We had no money, no time, no anything, screaming like a banshee just to stay on schedule. I said this is why I got out of the business. Last day of the shoot I got my mojo. We were shooting the fox hunt with helicopters and dogs and horses and it was just great. I thought, ‘Do we have to stop?’ ”