A Bit Hokey, But Film Is Warm And Charming "CROSSING DELANCEY" Rating: PG. Running Time: 1:37 By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff . THERE won't be any need for fireplaces, or even for central heating, this winter in St. Louis. A visit to "Crossing Delancey" will take care of it I don't know when I've seen a movie with more warmth, more love. And while it's sometimes hokey, and usually predictable, it's a film that is filled with charm from beginning to end. Susan Sandler adapted her off-Broadway play to the screen, and Joan Micklin Silver ("Hester Street," "Between the Lines") directed. Maybe it's the feminine touch of writer and director that give "Crossing Delancey" its wonderful qualities, and maybe it's the fact that most of the major roles are filled by women. I question if a man, even a highly sensitive man, could have done the same superlative job. Amy Irving is Izabelle (Izzy) Grossman, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and works in a Greenwich Village bookstore, where poetry and small imprints are more valued than best-sellers and where "important authors" (a synonym for impoverished writers) come to read and sign their books. They write well-reviewed books that don't sell, and they revel In their groupies. Reizl Bozyk, making her film debut at age 74, is Izzy's grandmother, concerned that her 34-year-old granddaughter is not yet married. By Bozyk's logic, the child simply cannot be happy. So Bozyk hires a matchmaker, created with brash brilliance by Sylvia Miles, and Miles finds Sam Posner, a pickle merchant a quiet, slightly shy man underplayed beautifully by Peter Riegert Irving scoffs. This is 20th-century America, she says, not 19th-century Russia. Young, independent women pick their own husbands and lovers, and Irving has her cap set for an important author, a foreign author, no less, played neatly by Jeroen Krabbe. But Bozyk persists. She makes sure Irving and; Riegert meet over lunch at her Lower East Side apartment; Miles not only sets up the meeting, but also makes sure there will be no leftovers from lunch. I Irving accepts a date, then tries to deal Riegert off to one of her friends in a beautiful singles bar scene. The friend, by the way, is Suzzy Roche, whose musical group, the Roches, provides much of the music for the film, and her acting sparkles in the get-together. Riegert is persistent, even sitting through a reading session in the bookstore where Irving works. Silver's direction, and the generally marvelous See MOVIES, Page 4