The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 60

With, 'Sweetie Campion makes a stunning, strange feature, debute The refreshing thing about Gus Van Sant's societal underbelly film is that it never wallows in picturesque down-and-outism, except at the end, when Dillon's character, frightened by the death of a girl he 'r "7 ml num. a. IT I I -S. KyiM i. xT'J same fate overtakes her after she discovers her glob of a husband, in the tattooed woman's tent and sloshes sulfuric acid onto their genitals.

Enraged, Fenix's father slices! his wife's arms off, then slashes his own throat in despair. Years later, Fenix, having been institutionalized after the trauma, escapes, is reunited with his mother, and puts together a vaudeville act with her' In which his hands become hers. Trie identity confusion deepens as he becomes a Latino Norman Bates, killing hordes of women. But there is a drive to purity in this zonked-out passion play with its bloody gushers of surrealistic guignol. Its ritualistic baroque extremism! Js recognizably Iberian, and its lufid absurdist style and mythic echoes tap the Theater of Cruelty, in which Jodorowsky was for a time im-1 mersed.

"Santa Sangre" is not for the squeamish, nor for those to whom blasphemy matters, but its moves seemed wilder and fresher i the first time around in "El Topo." The word from Paris, where the Chilean-born Mexican citizen Jo-. dorowsky currently is based, is that he's working on a sequel to "El Topo." "Santa Sangre" seems to be 1 jit- JAYCARRI Chaplin regenerated in 'Sidewalk Stories' SIDEWALK STORIES Directed by Charles Lane (USA). 7:45 p.m. Simon de la Brosse, Charlotte Gainsbourg in "The Little Thief. THE LITTLE THIEF Directed by Claude Miller (France).

Copley Place screening today at 7 p.m. live to direct it, but he wrote the story, set in 1 950, and you can tell it must have been close to him. It's full of his characteristic sympathy for troubled adolescents. Charlotte Gainsbourg's Janine Castang (Truffaut gave her the same name as his mother) could be a soul sister to the Antoine Doinel of "The 400 Blows." She's also semi-autobiographical, in that her only escape route from life as a petty thief lies in her interest in photography, to which she is introduced by a pal in reform school. Abandoned by her mother, she had been brought up in a provincial village by her embittered aunt and kindly but ineffectual uncle.

To alleviate her boredom, she got into the habit of going to the movies, fantasizing, and shoplifting. After being run out of town, she takes a job as live-in maid to a nice young prosperous couple. She embarks upon an affair with a timid, cultivated married man of 40, but finds herself identifying more closely with a sneak thief closer to her own age. Although the woman of the house later takes Janine's thefts personally, we're aware of their antisocial roots. Gainsbourg downy, pouty, shifty-eyed convincingly negotiates Janine's swings between boldness and shyness.

She's a girl trying things out, riding Gainsbourg's freshness and assurance. And while Miller Truffaut's longtime assistant isn't as light-handed as his boss was, he avoids making the film seem a case history. Even if it didn pointedly have Janine head for the sea in Doinel-like fashion every time she escapes from one form of confinement or another, the gentleness and empathy that permeate "The Little Thief make it a worthy homage to Truffaut. JAY CARR A polemic bolstered by character, detail A STORY OF WOMEN Directed by Claude Chabrol (France). Copley Place screening today at 9:20 p.m.

The thing that enables Claude Chabrol to nail France's petit bourgeois as unfailingly as he does in his films is his eye for the specifities of pettiness. Even in "A Story of Women," a film that could easily become a profcmlnist, prochoicc placard, he stays with his "-SWEETJE Directed by Jane (Australia). Copley Place 'screenings today at 7:15 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. With the possible exception of Roemer's potently resonant Plot Against Harry," Jane "Sweetie" is the festival's personal, unique and original "i-'lflkn.

Every frame in this comic hor-kj; story of two unstable sisters yitingles with an arresting mix of deadpan humor and yawning At first you think Kay is the V( weird one after she seduces a co--Kworker's fiance in a car park 55 after he announces his engagement, then stops having sex V- with him 13 months later when she's overcome by a fear of trees. we meet her sister Dawn, also known as Sweetie, a fat and vaguely sinister young woman who dresses black, thinks she has a future in A is sexually voracious, and is given to terrifying tantrums. a bit mental," Kay explains and disclaims to tier boyfriend. "She was just born. 1 don't have anything to do with her.

a dark spirit." tvi When Sweetie shows little incll-o ination to leave after she breaks into Kay's flat, and Kay threatens to her out, she growls, "I'm go-s ing to do something," then chews -u up a few of Kay's treasured minia-iitufe china horses. Matters escalate their sensible mother flees 'ther husband and goes north to as a cook for cowboys in the UKOtjtback. But the mad tyranny of ties prevails. Kay, her father U-Sriod her fiance minus Sweetie, whom they trick into staying home find the mother and bring her "Trees never seem to leave us the desperate Kay cries as anSweetie strips naked, blackens her -'f-aody and climbs up her childhood fee house, where she vows to Michael Lake, as Sweetie's jonked-out manager, and Jon Dar--nying, as her matter-of-factly un--yriinged father, enhance the film's iyitylity to be compellingly bizarre Ti without ever having to strain for effect. Jim Jarmusch and David could take strangeness sons from Campion.

She has a way looking at the world that's all her pwn, and "Sweetie" is a stunning feature film debut, fulfilling the 't; promise of her unforgettable short JAY CARR '''Little Thief: Gentle homage to Truffaut tT-t "La Petite Voleuse" was Francois jTijuffaut's last project. He didn't didn't like much and spooked by his own paranoiac suspicion, checks into a seedy hotel while going cold turkey and trying not to yield to the influence of a junkie priest drolly played by William Burroughs. There's a perversely kicky "Bonnie and Clyde" atmosphere at first, as Dillon and his suburban diva of a hyper wife, appealingly played by Lynch, ice a pair of spying narcs and stay high on the road, avoiding arrest by shipping their drugs ahead of them via Greyhound Bus. Soon, though, druggy desperado abandon gives way to paranoia and sour disintegration of their circle. the say-no ending makes the film socially acceptable.

But Van Sant shows a real kinship to the outlaw impulses that pervade the film's first half. His junkie's-eye-view of a subculture that never makes it to film in any believable form is filled with detail that, while stylized, is refreshingly inscribed, from a junkie's mother hiding her purse when he visits, to Dillon discussing1 his golf handicap with a cop tossing' his place for drugs. JAY CARR An unsentimental, bittersweet love story LONELY WOMAN LOOKING FOR A LIFELONG COMPANION Directed by Viacheslav Krishtojovlch (USSR). Copley Place screening to-day at 10 p.m. Bittersweet, poignant, unsentimental and funny, "Lonely Woman Looking for a Lifelong Companion" deftly avoids the usual cliches of the two-character love match.

There are other characters on the out-; skirts of the story, but it boils down to what Klavdia, a spirited, attractive dressmaker leading a dead-end life, is going to do about the consequences of posting a personal ad. At first, she's furious when all it; gets her is a drunk. She beats him! off with a stick. But with gentle per-1 sistence, he keeps coming back, and eventually she finds him getting to her. She knows he's a liability.

On the other hand, he's a nice guy, a circus aerialist who's had a few bad breaks. Every time we think we've got the film pegged, and prepare to dismiss it, Irina Kupchenko's way of negotiating Klavdia's shifting moods keeps surprising us. And every time Alexander Zbruyev's bum convinces us he's little more than a handout artist conning a nice woman, he discloses a gentle heart and an untarnished one. Their needs and hesitancies fight pitched battle here, and one that keeps us off balance. Each would probably be appalled to hear that' they're stumbling through a mating' dance.

Still, there no way to tell how this one will end. Not that suspense is its major strength. The sincerity, conviction and skill of its performers and director are. With surehandedness, they reach into the Russian tradition of soulful absurdity and come out with freshness and charm. Part of the film's appeal is its offhand glimpses of the center of Kiev, a sort of vest-pocket Leningrad, with architecture as handsome, but somehow cozier.

JAY CARR 'Santa Sagre' evokes a Bunuel 'Psycho' SANTA SANGRE Directed by Ale- Jandro Jodorowsky (Mexico). Cop- ley Place screenings today at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Very much in the vein of Jodor-' owsky's 1971 midnight cult fave, "El Topo." But while the earlier film suggested a Sergio Leone Western as Luis Bunuel might have reinvented it, this plays like a Bunuel remake of Hitchcock's "Psycho." Like "El Topo," it begins with a brutal father, a gringo who runs a circus, painfully initiating his tender young son (played by one of Jodorowsky's sons) into manhood. One mutilation, one castration and several murders later, the film becomes mother-dominated, like its young hero, Fenix.

Mom is a reli-s gious fanatic who demands canon-r ization for her favorite martyr, a young woman who bled to death when her arms were cut off by rapists she tried to resist. Soon, the Movie Times enthood," 1:30, 4:15, 10 Chestnut Hill: "Sea ot Love," 1:30, 4, 7:20, "Heart of Dixie," 1, 3, 5:15, 7:40, 10; "sex, lies, and videotape," 1, 3, 5:10, 7:30, 10; "Parenthood," 1 :30, 4:15, 7:10, 9.45; "Dead Poets Society," 1:15, 4, 7, 9:40 Cinema 57: "Relentless," 1:45, 3:45, 5:45, 7:45, "Kickboxer," 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, 9:15 Circle: "Cookie," 1, 7:25, 10; "Casualties of War," 1:30, "Uncle Buck," 1:15, 7:15. 9 30: "Lethal Weapon II." 1 45. 7:40, "When Harry Met Sally," 1,7:30, 9:40 Copley Place: "Boston Film Festival," with today's shows starting at 10 a "The Abyss," 10:30, 1:20, 4:10, 7, 10; "Batman." 10:15. 1:15, 4, 7.

"Uncle Buck," 10:15. 12:30, 2:45, 5, 7:15, "Licence to Kill." 10:10, 12:50, 3:30, 6:10, "When Harry Met Sally," 10, 12:15, 2:30, 4:45, "Indiana Jones and Last Crusade," 10, 12:40, 3:20, 6, 8:50 Harvard Square: "sex, lies, and videotape," noon, 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10; "When Harry Met Sally," noon, 2:15, 4:30, 7, "Do the Right Thjncr 12:45, 3, strengths, charting the rise of a woman named Marie Latour. She becomes an abortionist during the Nazi occupation when her neighbor asks her help, then turns professional, then adds another source of income by renting out her family's apartment to prostitutes during the afternoons. It's Isabelle Huppert's best role since Chabrol's "Violette Noziere" a decade ago, but while that film made Violettc's murderous eruption understandable by making us share the suffocating dreariness of her life, this one steers a different yet equally effective course. Huppert's Marie hates her life in a cramped, ratty apartment with her shellshocked husband, in whom she's no longer sexually interested.

But, given the chance, she'll dance to a popular tune on the radio or on a record player her neighbor gives her, and she cries when her Jewish copaine is sent to a death camp. There's a capacity for merriment in her, and as her illicit income rises, and is charted by Chabrol in a series of ever-improving apartments and pieces of decor, i she blooms. It's more than lipstick and a new hairdo. Part of it, Chabrol points out, is the simple reason that she and her family are eating better. When an anonymous informer turns her in and the impotent French authorities demand a death penally, Chabrol spells out the belief that they're really revenging themselves on their own shame.

htMm Tj LOEWS HARVARD SQ. 10 CHURCH ST. CAMBRIDGE 864-4580 SELECTED THEATRES fciSfC Nor does French hypocrisy in abortions while helping Nazis send Jewish kids to concentration camps pass unremarked upon. "A Story of Women" is hardly devoid of moral and political dimension, but because it's anchored in character and detail, with Huppert's most sympathetic performance yet as a woman ironically and tragically undone by her own tidy bourgeois efficiency, it's a powerful, dignified and regrettably timely film first and a powerful polemic second. JAY CARR A Yiddish treasure saved from oblivion THE DYBBUK Directed by Michael Waszynskt (Poland).

Copley Place screening today at 7:50 p.m. (benefit). Regular run begins Oct. 26 at the West Newton Theatre. This Yiddish-language film.

made in Poland in 1937 and restored over a five-year period by piecing together parts of five prints, is a treasure. Essentially, it depicts a victory of Talmudic reason over the mysticism of the Kabbalah as a tormented spirit is purged from the body of the woman he loved, and had reason to feel entitled to marry, but was too poor to. But as soon as the story begins unfolding, it becomes immediately apparent that "The Dybbuk" is about more than its story. Seldom, in fact, has the word restoration been applied more meaningfully to a film. This one not only restores to us the Yiddish stage classic by S.

Ansky, but preserves as well the idiomatic flavor of the shtetl culture from which it sprang. It's impossible while watching it not to reflect, too, that most of the people connected with the film were to die when the Holocaust began engulfing Europe two years later. Its themes of broken vows, passion and exorcisms are advanced with a muted staginess, but an unmistakable staginess all the same. It reflects the many times these performers, mostly from the Yiddish Art Theater of Vilna, performed the roles there. And yet the film is about more than its boxy, artificial sets housing undeniably authentic interiors.

Today's viewers will have to make allowances for the shtetl's patriarchal subordination of women; one can feel tradition's days numbered, about to slip away even faster than they did for Tevye. The stagy artifice a rabbi's too-trembling hand, a stern angel of a messenger who appears and disappears via primitive dissolves, a maiden's corny faint is itself an artifact of the culture that this film triumphantly resurrects. And its story of dark forces colliding is enhanced by its deployment of German Expressionist shadowplay. Rich in ethnographic detail, throbbing with folkloric Tightness, and animated by ethical imperatives, "The Dybbuk" represents heritage snatched from oblivion. JAY CARR Ajunkie's-eye-view of outlaw subculture DRL7GSTORE COWBOY Dtrected by Gus Van Sant (USA).

"Surprise screening" today at 10:10 p.m. Here they are, your typical next-door Junkies in Portland, Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch, rifling drugstores to stay high, but not always, and never in ways that sever their roots in America's suburbs. Allston: "Abyss," 1,7, "Kickboxer," 1:15, 7:25, 9:45 Assembly Square: "Heart of Dixie," 1:45, 4:40, 7:15, "Sea of Love," 1:15, 4, 7:10, "Kick-boxer," 1:25, 3:30, 5:30, 8, 10; "sex, lies, and videotape." 1:30, 4:15. 7:30, 10; "The Package," shows at 1:35, 4:20, 7:40, 10; "Relentless," 1:25, 3:25, 5:25, 7:55, 10; "The Abyss," 1:20, 4:10, 7, 10; "Parenthood," 1:40. 4:30.

7:20. "When Harry Met Sally," 1:20, 3:20. 5:20, 7:35, 9:55: shows at 1:20. 4:10, 7:10, "Uncle Buck," 1:15. 3:20, 5:20.

7:20, "Lethal Weapon II," 1:50. 4:50, 7:50, 10:20 Beacon Hill: "Lethal Weapon II," 1.30. 4:30, 7:30, "Do the Right Thing," 1, 3:15. 5:30, 7:40, "Ghost-busters II," 1. 3:10.

5:20, 7:30, 9:40 Brattle: "Contempt," 4, 7:55 p.m.; "Married Woman," 6. 9:55 p.m. Charles: "Dead Poets Society," 1,4,7. "Heart of Dixie," 1, 3. 5, 7:30, Casualties of War," 1, to Chert: "Sea of Love," noon, 2:30, 5, 73010; "Par- Haft Jkh ksM bUsti A L.

JL. I 1 Here's Charlie Chaplin regenerated in contemporary black urban terms. Like Chaplin, Charles Lane not only stars in this almost entirely silent black and white film, but wrote, produced and edited it-as well. His black Little Tramp here-is an outgrowth of the character. he invented in his student Academy Award-winning short, "A Placcdn Time." Lane is a little guy in both senses of the word, a sidewalk sketch artist who suddenly acquires a baby when its father 'is killed in a mugging, falls in love with a lovely shop owner, foils bad guys, dodges cops and even chafes fleeing taxi in a horse-drawn carriage.

So completely has he done, his homework that he even repro-Iduces many of Chaplin's set-ups land camera angles. There's an occasional film school feel to "Sidewalk Stories," land Lane isn't always light on feet; he doesn't give us a modern' jequivalent of Chaplin's balletic gi auc. nauici nc i cues uii pauios, which he handles cleanly, avoidTiji excess, relying on the cutenessl tji the baby (Nicole Alysia, a natural! performer) and the warmth of the! sympathetic shop owner (Sandypj Wilson). Lane does know how tp photograph his own interesting, jlarge-eyed face to potent effect. He' 5 an appealing talent, and "Sidewal i Stories" is a likable film.

Beyon i novelty value, it also finds moder ways of making contact with thie very real feel for poverty that was sp much a part of the early Chaplin jfilms. He has sly ways of making his 'points, such as leaving a copy of The New York Times Home section alongside a homeless guy sitting in a park. Even apart from his empaj- for the homeless. Lane hais heart as well as ability. We'll bje hearing from him again.

JAY CARR Today's screenings: "Ghosts of the Civil Dead," 10 a.m. 2:15 p.m. til 1 in O. 4:30 p.m. ZM "The Little Thief," 7 p.m.

tirA ii nn .1 oiory 01 women, p.m.' "Whisperers," 10:15 a.m. 2:50 p.m. "Runaway, 12:20 5 p.m. lilt. uuun, I (BENEFIT) Special Surprise Screening, a 10:10 p.m.

"Hollywood to Deadwood," Hi 3:10 nl'l 1 lf.AC 3f ine icrrurizcr, a.m 5:10 p.m. "Sweetie," 7:15 9:45 p.m. "Summer Vacation 10:30 a.m. fit 2:45 p.m. "The Plot Against Harry All liitj tx p.

ill. "Sidewalk Stories," 7:45 p.rr: "Lonely Woman Looking for Life's Companion," 10 p.m. "Santa Sangre," 10 p.nw "Romero," 8 p.m. at thO All screenings are at Copley Place unless otherwise ind cated. 5:15, 7:40, "Batman," 1:15, 4, 7, Package," 12:30, 2:50, 5:15.

7:40. 10:15 Janus Cinema: "Cookie," 1,.3:15, 5:30, 7:45, Wi Nickelodeon: "True Love." 12:40. 3:10. 5:20. Tsl "Wizard of Speed and Time," 12:30, sex, lies, and videotape, 1, 3:10, 5:30, -9, "Distant Voices, Still Lives," 12:45, 2:50, 4:4, 7:10, "The Package." 1:15, 4, 7, 9:30 -Ulf Paris: "Cookie," 1.

3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10 Revere Showcase: "Heart of Dixie." 1:10,.10, "sex, lies, and videotape." 1 20. 7:50, S.55; "Parenthood," 1:40, 7, "When Harry Met Sally." 1:15. 7:45. "Lethal Weapon II," 1:45. 7:35.

"Sea of Love," 1, 7:45, 10; "Lock-Up," 9 40 p.m. only; "Batman," 1 :40. "Uncle Buck," 1. 7:16, "The Abyss." 1:30, 7, "Turner and Hooch," 1, 7:20, "Casualties of War," 1:50, 7:10, "Kickboxer," 1:15, 7:35, "Releht-. less." 1:25.

7:50. 10; "The Packaae." 1. 7:40. 9:50 Somervllle Theater (Davis Square): "Tampopoi" Had sorgnum, Movie schedules are sunpet to unexpected changed sunpet nges vmm Mil I ij'siW aAmi jdjlJL! Ci.L1 iiiiiE sBsor aiii ELUND EUZHAN PALCY Bt1i PAUIA WEiNSTEIN i I I WESTHICTtO g3 I mwiit wuLimmiM (W) 1 STARTS if -TOMORROW! LOEWS NICKELODEON 606 COMMONWEALTH AVE. 424-1500 ..).