Daily News from New York, New York • 43

'Jeanne Dielman' borders on boring perfection By KATHLEEN CARROLL w. the most honorable reasons. She just wants to-be able to put food on her mahogany dining room table and fatten up her son with all-too-generous helpings of potatoes. There is nothing old-fashioned about Chantal Ackerman's directing approach. The young Belgian woman is known for her avant-garde films and this particular film, which was made in 1976, is definitely not for everyone's taste.

For Ackerman is intent upon filming every mundane detail. The camera stalks Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) as she moves from room to room in her oppressive but spotless apartment. It hovers over her while she dips the veal in flour, bread crumbs and egg batter (if nothing else, the film offers some helpful cooking hints). Ackerman even goes so far as to aim the camera at Seyrig's back while she spends several minutes washing dishes. Scenes like this will sorely test the patience of all but the most dedicated film buffs.

Still, there is something curiously compelling about Ackerman's chillingly documented portrait of an obsessively neat woman who slowly but inevitably cracks under the strain of maintaining her image as a perfect mother and housekeeper. JEANNE DIELMAN, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 10M BRUXELLES. Delphine Seyrle, Jan Decort. Directed by Chantal Ackernun. At the Film Forum.

Running tlmt: noun, II minute. No Rating. With English titles. The tight-lipped heroine of "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" is a meticulous housekeeper. Each day, she repeats the same menial chores with the same placid determination.

Waking up before dawn, she carefully buttons her robe and then goes to the kitchen where she grinds the coffee beans, boils some water, and polishes her son's shoes. She then picks out her son's clothes for the day and awakens the irritatingly sullen 15-year-old with a gentle tap on his shoulder. The week's menus never vary. On Tuesdays, she serves fried veal, which she prepares in advance. The afternoons are reserved for her clients, the usual tired businessmen.

She quietly collects their coats at the door and they meekly follow her to the bedroom. The cash from these daily assignations (which always end in time for her to boil the potatoes for the Delphine Seyrig: checking out her image evening meal) is promptly deposited in a soup tureen. For, despite her schoolmarmish appearance, Jeanne Dielman, like many a self-sacrificing old-fashioned movie heroine, has become a prostitute for Qmri Bpodiwgy tore is fife Mrgfe By DOUGLAS WATT SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Farce by Carl Reiner. With Andrew Duncan, Robvn Goodman, Norman Parker, other.

Directed by Michael Kahn. Set by Jim Clevburoh. Costumes by Mariann Verheyen. Li9htln by Victor En Vu Tan. A Second Stag production at the South Street Theater, 414 W.

42d St. before that, "Your Show of Shows," which was where Reiner first cut his eyeteeth, both as performer and writer or idea man, I believe. If you were fortunate enough to miss this bonbon first time around, I hate to, but must, tell you that it exposes us to a writer, Sheldon (Bud) Nemerov, 12 years after he gave birth to his one and only hit play. In fact, he hasn't been able to write anything since. So, in desperation, he tries to recreate the surroundings grubby kitchen alive with roaches, omnipresent and overly solicitous mother, and other things in which he composed all those years ago.

TROUBLE IS, success brought him a 14-room suburban house (with nine baths) and a chic wife with a robust sexual appetite. Obsessed with his desire to create a new play, "something different," he ignores wife Beth, moves that old kitchen furniture and its appliances into his study, rescues his old typewriter and hires a pest-control expert to supply him with roaches. Phil, the exterminator (though he detests that term), has soon moved in and is bedding Beth BtO oblivious to it all in his quest for inspiration. He even goes so far as to interview three prospective Jewish "mothers," eventually hiring one, the shapeliest of the three. One is black, and there's also a running gag about Bud and Beth's twin boys, one white and one black, which is resolv.ed with a topper at the finish.

All this is utterly mad, pointless, and, unlike true farce, uninvolving. All we are left with, finally, are some winning performers and, that rarity in today's theater, especially Off Broadway, an honest-to-good-ness drop curtain before, after and between scenes. ANDREW DUNCAN, in a role Bob Dishy created, plays the insanely driven Bud, perhaps not quite with the lunatic look of a genuine comic, but spiritedly, all the same. And Robyn Goodman is enormously likable as his devoted yet unfaithful (for his sake) wife, Beth. The only other principal in the large cast the count is up to 16 at the final curtain is Norman Parker, the crude exterminator whose alliance with Beth is first formed by their common interest in La whom they both quote at will.

Michael Kahn has staged this skimpy farrago with, as great a sense of fun as he could muster, visual gags and all, but he never had a chance. Set, costumes and lighting are just what the play doctor ordered for a farcical evening, but again to no Nice people, no show. Well, spring has sprung, and I suppose that's justification enough for the normally serious-minded Second Stage to turn giddy for a spell. But with Carl Reiner's farce, "Something Different," which opened a two-week stand last night at the South Street? No way. Among other odd features of this choice is the fact that the Second Stage is (it says so right in the front of every program) "dedicated to producing plays of the last TEN years that we believe deserve another chance," whereas Reiner's little turkey bit the Broadway dust more than 15 years ago.

More to the point, however, is the fact that it never really deserved a first chance. EXCEPT MAYBE on TV, and even then in a considerably condensed form, brief as this two-act escapade (with intermission) is. One could see it serving th. Carol Burnett troupe of old; or, long TODAY al 2 ft WINNER BEST MUSICAL Theater directory TODAY at 2 8 "'ON YOUR TOES' IS TERRIFIC! A TOTAL DELIGHT1 NATALIA MAKAROVA IS SEXY AND STUNNING!" Barnes, N.Y. Post TODAY mt 2 ft I P.M.

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