Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours (L’Heure d’Été), from his own screenplay (in French with English subtitles), is curiously described by the 54-year-old writer-director of a dozen or more feature films as his “most Taiwanese film.” Mr. Assayas goes on to elaborate on his admiration for contemporary Chinese filmmakers: “It’s my own personal schizophrenia, but I’ve always felt like a sort of Taiwanese director working in France. When I started making movies, the preoccupations of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang affected me, resonated with my own. Later, I became interested in the work of Wong Kar-wai and Tsai Ming-liang. … With Summer Hours I return to very local material where there is a relationship to nature, time and modernity, the themes I share with Hou Hsiao-hsien.”

The film begins with the reunion of three far-flung 40-something siblings with their aging mother in her late uncle’s countryside mansion with its valuable 19th-century art collections. Adrienne (Juliette Binoche) has become a San Francisco and New York designer; one of her brothers, Frédéric (Charles Berling), has remained in Paris as a published economist and university professor; and the younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), has become a successful businessman in China.

Hélène (Edith Scob), their mother, has decided that the time has come to discuss the division of her estate after her death. Hélène hoped against hope that her children would keep her home and its art treasures intact, but with two of her children established in faraway foreign lands, she sees little prospect of this happening. She’s pinned her dwindling prospects on Frédéric, at least to see that Lisa (Dominique Reymond), their longtime cook, maid and retainer, is generously rewarded for her long service to the family.

But Hélène’s death shortly after this first reunion, and a subsequent visit with Adrienne in San Francisco, compels Frédéric to undertake the difficult task of reconciling the wishes of the three children in disposing of their mother’s estate. Adrienne and Jérémie are too committed to their careers abroad even to contemplate returning to Paris except on short visits, and Frédéric has not been successful enough as an author to afford buying out their shares of the inheritance. A further complication arises when Adrienne insists on submitting a precious collection of their famous uncle’s sketches to Christie’s auction house in New York. The curator of the Musée d’Orsay, to which many of the artifacts in the house had been promised, threatens to block an exit permit for the sketches on the grounds that these are national treasures.

Behind all this agitation surrounding the disposition of part of France’s past, Mr. Assayas has acknowledged a metaphorical extension to trends in current economic policies of which he vehemently disapproves. “In Europe,” Mr. Assayas suggests, “there is a lot of abdication among technical sales executives who identify with Anglo-Saxon free-market culture and its values, learned interchangeably in French or American business schools. They scorn their own history, and deep down, their own identity. … I wanted to tell the story of a family that has roots in the past, but with ramifications in the present... Globalization is as much a human as economic phenomenonals.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Assayas has proposed a distinction between Adrienne, an artist whose talents freely cross international borders, and Jérémie, a business executive whose venue is determined by economic forces beyond his control. Frédéric, as the writer-director’s alter ego, does not condemn his two siblings. Yet there is a moment of pathos when Frédéric’s young daughter bursts into tears in her grandmother’s garden when she realizes that she will never be able to repeat to her own grandchildren the same words in the same place where her own grandmother had held her close and told her how precious she was.

At this moment, Mr. Assayas comes close to replicating a similar feeling of helpless nostalgia in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. As it is, the writer-director of some of the most sharp-edged critiques of modern mores in the French cinema has softened his approach, except as regards his dour view of museums as dark places that embalm art objects instead of enhancing them.

asarris@observer.com

Did I forget to mention that at 75, in her new Louise Brooks bangs, a Jewish grandmother named Mrs. Leonard Gordon, a.k.a. Rita Moreno, is also one of the most glamorous septuagenarians since Dietrich? If you don’t believe me, then get yourself over to the Carlyle, where this volcano of versatility literally erupts, like a musical Vesuvius, on Tuesday through Saturday until Feb. 10. It’s high time, if you ask me. I’ve seen dazzling little demonstrations of her unique abilities through the years, but never before have so many of her protean talents come together in an intimate showcase so carefully constructed and custom-designed. The third number by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams sets the stage for what’s to come: “Part Tijuana, part Boston … half Jane Fonda and half Jane Austen,” she sings—“But Alive!” And she proves it, with favorite songs, anecdotes, tributes to Harold Arlen and Peggy Lee, a bit of up-tempo jazz over here, and a lump-in-the-throat ballad over there. There is something for everyone, and her joy and enthusiasm treat every sold-out house like a class of favorite students on a holiday picnic.

It’s odd but endearing that, as a youngster from the tropics, her favorite singer was not Carmen Miranda, but honey-dripping Peggy Lee, whose memory she toasts with a bittersweet “Black Coffee” and a foxy “Fever.” I occasionally forget how much beauty and magic came out of the legendary Harold Arlen–Truman Capote musical House of Flowers, but when she brings out all of the wistfulness and bravery of first love in the exquisite “I Never Has Seen Snow,” I was electrified all over again. “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze” brings back the old days at Birdland and gives veteran pianist Russ Kassoff a chance to swing in chords. Popping a noisy, obnoxious gumball in her mouth for a hilarious take on “Class” from the score of Chicago proves all over again what an adroit comic she is when she finds a clever piece of material that matches her own bawdy sense of humor. Though she mostly sings—and wonderful, underexposed songs, at that—the gypsy still resides restlessly in her soul; in a space the size of a bridge table, she does some happy soft-shoe Terpsichore from The Pajama Game with a real Fred Astaire cane. You might not believe her when she tells you she remembers the days when you could take a round-trip trans-Atlantic voyage for $195, but you’ll be thrilled that she remembers her roots with a Puerto Rican Christmas samba called “Aguinaldo.” (Yes, she even plays the maracas.) Two caveats: a forgotten number from Sunset Boulevard that does not work out of context, and her encore. I can’t wait for legions of singers to dis­cover a new anthem that will bury and replace the boring, ossified “Here’s to Life.” Rita hasn’t tired of it as much as the rest of us, who suffer through countless arrangements of this overexposed war­horse by every cabaret diva from Kitty Carlisle to Eartha Kitt, many of them in the same Café Carlyle. But hey, why grumble? Rita Moreno is so lovely, graceful, accomplished and entertaining that she even sends the curmudgeons away cheering.

40’s Folly

More lighthearted bliss awaits lovers of the Great American Songbook in When the Lights Go On Again, a celebration of the nostalgic songs of World War II at an intimate little upstairs cabaret room on West 72nd Street called the Triad. The usual reason for retro hep-cat revues that re-create Betty Grable movies like Pin-Up Girl and popular 40’s radio shows like Your Hit Parade is pure camp. But this show is different. O.K., it rekindles memories of Snooky Lanson, Dorothy Collins and “Lucky Strike Extras,” and the four bright and eager cast members include two guys (Bill Daugherty and Paul Kropfl) with Harold Teen haircuts and two gals (Christina Morrell and Connie Pachl) in Toni home permanents like Martha O’Driscoll and Jane Frazee, but the show really does combine beautiful songs with the kind of nostalgia that will live on in the hearts and minds of anyone who remembers the last meaningful and important war in history whenever they play Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” It was a time of ration books, war-bond rallies and victory gardens. Prime rib was scarce, but people on the home front never seemed to run out of cucumbers.

There is even something of a storyline, thin as a slice of Hollywood Canteen Spam, that revolves around a vocal group called the Moonlighters. Singing close four-part harmonies reminiscent of the chartbusting quartets of the day like the Modernaires, the Honeydreamers, Four Jacks and a Jill and Mel Tormé’s Mel-Tones, they broadcast from hotel ballrooms, move into radio, fall in love, break up when the war breaks out, and reunite on a U.S.O. tour. Twenty-eight songs arranged by the show’s musical director, Doyle Newmyer, are laced with actual replays of old, popular commercial jingles for Cream of Wheat, Pepsi-Cola and Rinso White, as well as F.D.R.’s announcement of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Is there a market for this kind of flag-waving morale in today’s cynical world? Judging from the packed house on the day I saw the show, the answer is: You bet. Most of today’s cabaret audiences may think Pearl Harbor is a duty-free port in the Caribbean, but stupidity is no reason to ignore history.

Besides, when all is said and done, it’s the songs that make memories glow and hearts melt. And with 28 of them to make an entire decade live again, if you don’t hear something that moves you to reach for a Kleenex, then you might as well throw in the towel and move to a mudslide in Kazakhstan. From the gorgeous Burke–Van Heusen ballad “Humpty Dumpty Heart” to Glenn Miller’s theme song “Moonlight Serenade,” your ears will rejoice. “No Love No Nothin’,” introduced by Alice Faye in The Gang’s All Here, and a creamy picnic harmony arrangement of “The White Cliffs of Dover” are two particular favorites of mine, and there were even a few gems I was amazed to discover for the first time, such as “I Came Here to Talk for Joe.” What’s missing are the dreamy big-band voices that enhanced those vocal groups that served as star-spangled morale-boosters for the boys in the trenches. Mr. Daugherty is a cabaret staple with range and versatility, and the handsome Mr. Kropfl (change that name, kid, if you want to go places) can croon with the best of them. The women are especially good on comedy material (“He’s 1-A in the Army, and he’s A-1 in my heart!”), but their voices sound too much alike to add much ballast on solos, and Tommy Dorsey would never have hired one soprano, much less two. Still, it’s not easy to grouse about any show with so many terrific songs, so much enthusiasm, or so much heartfelt entertainment value. I had a swell time, and so will you.

Jude in Snooze

The new movie season is off to a stumble and a mumble. With Anthony Minghella writing his own script as well as directing Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn, I expected more from Breaking and Entering than a dull and dreary snooze. It premiered last September in Toronto to sluggish reviews, then opened briefly in December in Los Angeles to qualify for the Oscars, and now is finally arriving commercially. What a disappointment. After 10 years, the eroding relationship between Will (Jude Law), an unmarried London architect; Liv (Robin Wright Penn), his Swedish girlfriend; and their autistic daughter, who is obsessed with ballet and acrobatics, finally implodes after Will falls in love with Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian refugee whose teenage son breaks into his office and steals his computer. For a film about urban angst and adultery, it’s more dysfunctional than both its plot and characters, stretching patience and credibility to the max.

Envisioning London as the nadir of the multicultural mayhem that is overwhelming the atlas faster than global warming, Mr. Minghella deposits proud and decent people in the dangerous neighborhood of King’s Cross, where Will struggles to rebuild city slums with daring new architecture that enrages traditionalists (think of the ugly Pompidou Center in Paris), and where the inhabitants have been hit by a series of burglaries. For Will, spending his nights slouched in his Land Rover staring at his warehouse seems preferable to sitting at home with his depressed Swedish partner and their daughter. When the teenage thief turns up, Will tracks him down to a council flat near Camden, where the boy’s exotic mother persuades him not to call the police. When he discovers his laptop inside her flat and finds his first flash of happiness in years inside her bed, a brief encounter leads to an affair fraught with lies and deceptions. Describing the collapsing moral centers of their lives, the characters keep using the word “complicated.” It’s a word that fits the movie, too. The dilemmas faced by everyone are well drawn, but the humanity with which Will and Liv save the vulnerable Bosnian immigrants from deportation is not entirely credible. Amira, the woman from Sarajevo struggling to stay alive as a seamstress and save her son from a life of crime in a seedy, hopeless environment, is the emotional center of the film, and Ms. Binoche is touching and effective. Less believable is the anemic home life of Will and Liv, whose frigidity is passed off as one of those “Swedish things,” but which fails to work in English, let alone Swedish. The bizarre behavior of their daughter, who performs gymnastics day and night and screams hysterically at all hours, is an annoying distraction. So is the intrusion of Vera Farmiga (from Martin Scorsese’s The Departed), who keeps popping up as a flamboyant hooker from Eastern Europe who turns tricks in Mr. Law’s Range Rover. I was more impressed with the way the director uses the change from ruin to revitalization in both architecture and human contact as metaphors for globalization. But in the end, nothing in Breaking and Entering makes much of an impact. Like the decaying London sprawl it depicts, the film is also a damaged blight ready for the wrecking ball.

The setting is London, the years are 1934 to 1946. After the death of their father, two sisters with very different ideologies face an uncertain future. Madeleine (Olivia Williams) is the level-headed, restrained and serenely confident wife and mother, obsessed with manners and appearances. Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter) is the high-strung, eccentric, self-absorbed bohemian who stays on after their father's funeral in the elegant home of Madeleine and her husband, Rickie (Paul Bettany), on fashionable Montagu Square. They try to set up Dinah with a wealthy suitor, but just when it looks like the wayward sister is ready to surrender and settle for a respectable marriage with an oaf she does not love, just to please Madeleine and their arrogant, controlling mother (Eleanor Bron), fate interrupts. Even before her own willful obstinacy wrecks the engagement, Dinah is surprised by a different kind of intervention. Under the pretext of having a nightcap, her brother-in-law leaves his wife's bedroom, wakes the sleeping Dinah and demands that she break it off. Rickie, who has always been a timorous and mousy soul, is suddenly transformed into a lusty centaur in the first hammerlock hold of a long-suppressed sexual awakening. For their clandestine meetings, Rickie sets her up in a secret flat, where they while away the afternoons in bed. Madeleine fears for her sister's reputation, unaware that Dinah has become her husband's mistress, and Rickie fears discovery. When Dinah becomes pregnant, her care falls under the control of her best friend Bridie, who appears to be in love with Dinah, too. Rickie is seriously injured when his car crashes in a snowstorm on his way to the seaside cottage, where the baby dies in childbirth. Back in Montagu Square, he goes through the motions of family life, but Madeleine eventually receives a letter from Bridie revealing the affair. The grieving Dinah, the furious and humiliated Madeleine, and the debonair but wimpy Rickie seek ways to resolve their differences. But it's not until the two estranged sisters reunite in 1946 that we see the progression of tragic events through the years in flashbacks. Madeleine and Rickie have lost their son in the war. Madeleine and Dinah have lost Rickie, who was killed in an air raid on his way to a jeweler to pick up a silver bracelet he had engraved for Dinah. The world is no longer the safe and ordered, socially stratified place it was 12 years earlier. Judgment no longer has the same meaning. After a decade of deception and death, all the two sisters have left is each other. Who, in the supreme pain, sacrifice and guilt of survival, has the right to affix blame?

The Heart of Me has a lot of plot, and maybe I've revealed too much of it here. But I have scarcely scratched the surface. Like Henry James and Graham Greene, Rosamond Lehmann knew how to describe the simmering passions that lie discreetly below the surface of ordered lives within the context of their times, without forming opinions about their outcome. Divorce and the never-ending disillusionment of love were primary subjects, both of which are treated with unsentimental sophistication and candor here. Although she died in 1990 at age 89, it's a safe assumption that Ms. Lehmann might have approved of the precision and respect with which screenwriter Lucinda Coxon has transformed the pages of her largely autobiographical novel, published in 1953. Irish director Thaddeus O'Sullivan has also done a nice job of customizing it for the screen, even though some of the actors do not exactly fit my definition of dream casting. For the pivotal role of Rickie, a man who wrecks so many lives in his selfish pursuit of passion and is seemingly the drop-dead date bait for British women everywhere, Paul Bettany is too effete-all red hair and splotchy skin, in that flushed, freckled English schoolboy manner. He's supposed to be passive and indecisive until he risks everything for love, but I just wondered what either of the women saw in him in the first place. Helena Bonham Carter is too goth for the beautiful and devastatingly alluring Dinah. She seems to have majored in weird. Their nude scenes are as enticing as a plate of Alpo. Meanwhile, Olivia Williams, as the deceived wife, is too lovely and patrician to give either of them a free lift to the nearest tube station. I can think of a dozen casting choices that would have enlivened and enhanced this film more.

But small caveats aside, The Heart of Me is a civilized film about people who are as fascinating for their flaws as for their strengths. For people who long for a return to storytelling, it is admirably considered in its trajectory, and happily devoid of the kind of irritating special effects that are almost always inserted these days to distract you from the fact that, aside from the noise and dazzle, nothing else is going on. In a word, recommended.

High-Flying Soufflé

Nothing works anymore, especially in France, where everyone is constantly on strike and, as any visiting American journalist at the Cannes Film Festival can attest, on nine tries out of 10 to reach the outside world you can't even get a dial tone. It's so frustrating it seems surreal. In the amiable new French romantic comedy Jet Lag , writer-director Daniele Thompson takes a jaundiced look at cosmopolitan dysfunction, then optimistically concludes that since nothing is going to improve, you might as well laugh and make the most of it. Like, if you're stranded in an airport and plagued by flight delays, look around. Cruise the lounge. You might find something you never expected, like love.

On a typical day of French hysteria, two harried Parisians find themselves in the middle of a logistical nightmare at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It's the first day of the school holidays, the pilots have gone on strike, the computers are down, the flight controllers have canceled every flight, the weather is awful, and stranded passengers are draped over every imaginable chair in the terminal. Into one end of the departure-lounge chaos enters Rose (Juliette Binoche), an arch, garishly made-up beautician with a cheap economy ticket to Mexico City, who is fleeing an abusive boyfriend and hiding behind so much rouge that she looks like a Jell-O salad. Into the opposite end of the terminal comes Felix (Jean Reno), an exhausted frozen-food mogul making a brief layover from New York to Munich to attend a funeral. Neither of them is in the mood for an encounter, but they just can't seem to get away from each other! After she drops her cell phone down the toilet and has to borrow his, he is tortured by all of her incoming calls. Then her jealous, neurotic boyfriend (the great Sergi López) shows up, punches him in the nose and gets dragged away by the police, threatening revenge. Already on a collision course with fate, things get worse when they are grounded for the night and forced to share the only available room in the airport Hilton. The American remake will undoubtedly star Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. I look forward to avoiding it like a discount ticket to Europe on a crop duster.

But I had a fine time here. Director Thompson and her two A-list stars take a grand holiday from their usual seriousness, exploring all of the possibilities offered by this situation with charm and style. Ms. Binoche, ditzy and delicious in a frivolous role, is a buzz of hair spray, bargain basement perfume and irritating chatter. Mr. Reno, angular and anal-retentive, has dizzy spells, needs sleep and is allergic to everything from her dusting powder to the noxious food she orders from room service. With nothing to lose, they open up about everything that bothers them, overflowing with an honesty so painful that they bounce off each other like birdies in a game of badminton. Two total, strong-willed strangers-miserable, detained, furious and on their way to somewhere else-with nothing in common except a mutually desperate situation and a temperamental cell phone. Naturally, they fall in love.

Ms. Thompson gets so much humor out of the colorful claustrophobia in rain-soaked Roissy-Charles de Gaulle that I felt like I was stranded there myself. The witty screenplay cleverly delineates between two very different personalities who are by turns polite, ready to kill each other, and eager to dispense the kind of maddening advice only strangers would dare to offer. Ms. Binoche and Mr. Reno make a superbly droll and original pair of megastars. Moving deftly from Paris to the Las Brisas resort in Mexico City and back to the French countryside, Jet Lag is in the air at all times, in more ways than one. Bring your passport and get ready to travel. The only thing that lags in this high-flying soufflé is the title.

Must-See Peggy Lee

Cool music from every keyhole in town means it's time for the annual JVC Jazz Festival. While celebrating the publication of his terrific new, can't-put-it-down autobiography, Myself Among Others , the talk of the music world, festival director George Wein, is still finding the time to trumpet swinging events that will dominate the Apple from June 15 to 28. This year, my advice is simple: If you can pop your fingers 24/7 for the dozens of concerts that will get your groove back for two solid weeks, go for it. But if you can only spend the time and money for one, follow me in the stampede to Carnegie Hall on Monday, June 23, at 8 p.m. for a star-studded tribute to Norma Deloris Egstrom of Jamestown, N.D., better known as Miss Peggy Lee. In the world of jazz, she was the most famous and beloved white-chick singer in history, so the box-office bonanza that is turning this salute to a legend into the center-spot emerald of this year's JVC marathon is nothing less than what she deserved. Every musician who has ever been able to hear artistry and perfection beyond the limitations of his own work worshipped at the shrine of Peggy Lee. No wonder this celebration of her life and songs features an astonishing lineup of performers from Broadway, jazz, pop and country that is raising eyebrows and expectations. Producer Richard Barone promises "a musical biography of Peggy Lee's life" through her own compositions as well as songs written for her, and arrangements by her colleagues, collaborators, friends and fans. Cutting to the chase, George Wein simply adds: "The music will be fabulous and the vocal stylings by some of the world's greatest singers will make Peggy's dynamic songs come alive again."

The jury is still out, but don't expect the mundane. I don't want to give away so many secret ingredients that the flavor of the feast will falter, but when was the last time you saw Nancy Sinatra and Deborah Harry sing a medley from Disney's Lady and the Tramp ? Bea Arthur will take the lid off "Big Spender," and Jackie Cain will make a rare appearance singing the exquisite Peggy Lee–Marian McPartland ballad "In the Days of Our Love" in a bossa-nova tempo, with Marian herself at the piano. Jane Monheit, Shirley Horn, Maria Muldaur, Petula Clark, Peter Cincotti, Cy Coleman, Ann Hampton Callaway, Eric Comstock, Rita Moreno, Quincy Jones, Ronnie Milsap, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Chris Connor … the list threatens to start a precedent. Nobody knows who will essay "Fever" and "Mañana" (some things must remain secret). One thing is certain: Nobody would be foolish enough to try "Is That All There Is?", so after an introduction by Mike Stoller, get ready for the song on film, performed by Miss Peggy Lee herself.

Peggy once told me, "When it comes to singing for 100 people in a nightclub or 10,000 people in a stadium, I don't much care as long as they like me. But when it comes to buying a new car or upholstering a sofa, 10,000 people at 50 bucks a pop is better." Carnegie Hall is selling out fast, so even if you don't see her in person on June 23, Miss Peggy Lee will be there.

As soon as I assessed the psycho-social, pop-culture significance of these calorific cookies, my eyes bugged out on stalks and all I could think was, "It's all James Lipton's fault!" That fawning, bearded host of Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio –the guy with the shifty eyes and, according to The New York Times , the "shoes with uncommonly high heels." His raison d'être is to slobber over movie actors, verbally hump their "body of work" and marvel sycophantically at their "interesting choices." I was just about to start railing at emerging Balducci's customers about how movie actors were profoundly average people and how we should stop lauding them and start taking the piss out of them when I saw that it was time to rush home for the Joan and Melissa pre-show on E!

I'm glad I did. Because, as of this, the 73rd Academy Awards, I can tell you categorically that Fashion is in retreat from Hollywood! And Fashion and Hollywood are as likely to get back in bed together as Nicole and Tom.

It started last year with "country-club" chic: It looked like a trend, but was actually the first tangible sign that the high-fashion invasion of Hollywood had hit a glass ceiling. Previously, the Pradas and Guccis seemed to be getting a foothold, second on their way to and the esoterica of the European runways and the red carpets of the world becoming one and the same.

But the ever-more-codified world of high fashion is, as it turns out, only marginally more relevant for movie actors than it is for the average couch potato watching on TV. This season, the actors backed away from creative fashion as if it had foot-and-mouth disease. The most sizzling names–Helmut, Miguel, Marc, Martin–were totally absent. Actors returned with a vengeance to the classic, boring appropriateness of occasion wear : Giorgio, Valentino, Vera, Pamela, Randolph, etc. dominated the proceedings. Yes, there was Christian Dior (Sigourney Weaver), Michael Kors (Joan Allen), Versace (Hilary Swank) and Dolce & Gabbana (Angelina Jolie), but these get-ups had little to do with what the designers normally signify. At best, they were dumbed-down versions of their evening-wear aesthetic, i.e. occasion wear.

And what is there to say about occasion wear? Nothing really. As soon as Joan Rivers opened her gums it became clear that the media flirtation with high fashion was out of gas. Most of the time, Ms. Rivers did not even bother to ask who had designed which frock, and her cameraman had stopped "panning down" altogether. Still, Joan was hysterical–"Mad cows? We eat them, we wear them, we make shoes out of them; no wonder they're mad!"; "The commercial breaks are so long, you can schedule surgery." I'll never forget Julian Schnabel's face when she asked him for his business card; his visage crumpled as he digested the horrible realization that terminal hipness doesn't count for much on the fromage -strewn red carpet.

But back to fashion–or the lack of it. You could count the number of fashionably attired chicks on one hand. Juliette Binoche (Gaultier), Björk (Marjan Pejoski), Kate Hudson (Chloë), Sarah Jessica Parker (Calvin Klein) and Jennifer Lopez (Chanel) were all dressed à la mode , and they stood out like trannies at a football game. I thought they looked fantastic. But as I admired their gonads, I also struggled to imagine what the untutored eyes of the general public would make of, for example, Björk's muppetty swan tutu, or Juliette Binoche's kinky 1930's dominatrix. And what about Sarah Jessica? Dressed in next season's trends–i.e., short and black–she was so insanely au courant that she shot herself right up the bum. The New York Post , no doubt accurately echoing the opinions of the masses, said her cocktail dress "shows she's just a TV star." Waa-waaa!

Despite the dearth of high fashion, the evening did yield some trends–they just happen not to be very trendy:

1. 1950's Vegas-speak. Saying "It's great to be here" is O.K. again.

2. Asians! Asians! Asians! I loved Crouching Gerbil, Hidden Hampster , or whatever the hell it was called. Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi both looked dynamite. But Asian style also penetrated the ranks of the white girls who all had some kind of Dewi Sukarno-Imelda Marcos upswept hairdo. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Laura Linney had identical coffee-cake bouffants, and Julia Roberts toted an oversized Styrofoam bun. Matronly as these coiffures are, they are age-appropriate and lend an aura of timeless stature where none might exist. James Lipton should get one.

3. Being old. The colostomy-bag brigade stole the evening: Julie Andrews, Dino De Laurentiis, Ernest Lehman, Ellen Burstyn and my personal fave: Mr. Jack Cardiff. Don't tell me you haven't seen his movies or I will start dribbling again. Rent immediately!

4. Talking of rentals. Many hunks–Sting, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Bridges–wore fabulously nondescript tuxedos, and looked great in their casual black tie. Benicio Del Toro–a male, Puerto Rican Charlotte Rampling–looked fantastically charismatic in his so-nondescript-it-had-to-be-a-rental tux, even though it was Armani. Humor-impaired Russell Crowe (re: Gladiator –in ancient Rome, actors were slaves. James Lipton would probably have been one, too) looked like P.T. Barnum in his over-thought, over-wrought Armani (again) ensemble.

5. Not thanking God. I guess they only do that in the music industry.

6. Pedophilic humor: Joan: "Michael Jackson has been to Billy Elliot 47 times–and I don't mean the movie."

7. Button-down evening shirts–see Geoffrey Rush. A " j'adore !" for subtlety.

My total, overall " j'adore !"? It's a toss-up between Björk's ballsy Dancer in the Dark number and Penélope Cruz in her Ralph Lauren Queen Victoria frock.

Re: next year? I wish Joan Rivers would zero in on the third- and fourth-string red-carpet flotsam. Who was that severe-looking Asian woman in the Rosa Klebb suit? Or that lady who looked like Marty Allen in a mauve feather boa?

If you have any idea who these people are, e-mail me ASAP at sdoonan@aol.com.

The newly named Annual Ben Brantley Award for the Most Amazing Observations in the History of Theater goes to … Ben Brantley! "Shall we start with Eileen Atkins's right leg?" he startled the world when he began his review of The Unexpected Man . "It is, like her left leg, slender and shapely, and it has no doubt served this fine actress well over the years as something to stand on."

Congratulations to our Ben, whose amazing new body-part aesthetic went on to wrestle with the masterly acting performance of Alan Bates' shoulders, to be followed by a touching tribute to Hallie Foote's feet in The Last of the Thorntons . "Watching her feet move becomes enough to make you cry," Ben wrote.

What can I say? There are no words. To serious business! Our Award for Best Play of the Year goes to David Auburn's Proof . When it first opened off Broadway I rated Mr. Auburn's fresh and humane and lovely play about the fragility of life and love much higher than the thirtysomething predictability of the recent Pulitzer Prize–winning Dinner With Friends by Donald Margulies. Though Proof ends on a sentimental note, we feel that we have not met Mr. Auburn's characters before, and no new play has given us such pleasure.

This has been the year of the actress-Mary-Louise Parker's dropout daughter in Proof, Juliette Binoche's enigma in Betrayal , Janie Dee's actoid Tin Man in Comic Potential , Linda Lavin's kvetcher in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife , Laila Robins' seductive richest lady in the world in Tiny Alice . There are, as they say, no winners or losers at this level. They're all terrific actresses. I'm just opening the envelope now …. The Best Actress Award goes to Mary-Louise Parker. She delights us in her grungy displacement and intelligent yearning. Her bright, wrecked daughter alongside Larry Bryggman's adored, nutty father possesses an appealing Salinger-esque quality. The two of them might easily be looking for bananafish together; Ms. Parker finds them.

I must add with regret that the most underrated performance of the year belongs to Ms. Binoche. Here's a supreme actress astonishingly labeled as "miscast" by The Times when she's the beguiling focus of every key scene of Harold Pinter's Betrayal . Ms. Binoche's undervalued mystery is that she plays ambiguity with utter naturalness. If you play Pinter naturally-as the great Michael Gambon also does in the London revival of The Caretaker -some people mistakenly look for the famous pauses "pregnant with meaning." Ms. Binoche is acting wonderfully in two foreign languages-English and Harold Pinter-yet she's criticized for not being "Pinteresque." Don't get me started.

The proud winner of our Quote of the Year goes to the original gay Teletubby, Nathan Lane, for announcing in this newspaper that the trouble with drama critics is that they all have "very small penises."

Our Wittiest Closing-Night Speech Award winner is George C. Wolfe, who announced cheerfully from the stage of the Virginia Theatre after the early closure of Wild Party : "When they run you out of town, you can always pretend you're leading a parade!"

The Best-Dressed Award goes to Isaac Mizrahi, who made theater history in his one-man show, Les MIZrahi , by being the first performer to model a little something he'd whipped up on a sewing machine during the show before segueing into a charming rendition of "A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich, and You."

The Wise Decision of the Year Award goes to Lincoln Center's André Bishop, who, following certain protests, graciously reversed his lousy decision to turn down Tom Stoppard's new play The Invention of Love , which Lincoln Center is now due to produce next year.

Our award for Best Production of the Year goes to the Theater for a New Audience, for dusting off King John and bringing Shakespeare's rarely produced play back from the dead. Karen Coonrod's refreshingly uncluttered production of this political drama that swims in murderous expediency didn't force its topicality on us or deck itself out with the usual tricks. It was a major contribution and the best Shakespeare (English or American) I've seen in many a season.

Our Special Award goes to the magnificent ensemble of August Wilson's Jitney . The nine-member cast of Marion McClinton's production has committed itself memorably to Mr. Wilson's world of small and profound lives in mortal struggle and good humor and amazing grace. Their characters, which speak to us so eloquently of the black American experience, live in hope of denied dignity, and no finer ensemble acting exists.

The Broadway musicals this year-the tatty low humor of Full Monty , the laborious Masterpiece Theatre slog of Jane Eyre , the suicidal Seussical -don't amount to a hill of beans, my friends. I know it, you know it, all God's children know it. One astonishing music-theater piece, however, was the most innovative theater I've seen since the extraordinary new work of Robert Lepage. The award for Best New Work by a Mile goes to John Moran, whose hourlong Book of the Dead (Second Avenue) at the Public Theatre was a revelation in its imaginative perception and playful design. Mr. Moran's ritual dance of death isn't as dark it sounds, though. His fabulous work fills us with hope, at least for the future of theater.

The Theater Book of the Year has me searching for phrases to sing its praises. A celebration of more than a thousand lyrics of our greatest songwriters-or popular poets-has been edited and lovingly collected by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball in Reading Lyrics (Pantheon). It's a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. It accentuates the positive. It would make a nice last-minute Christmas prezzy. I've been savoring every page sip by sip for weeks, particularly the mordant, scintillating lyrics of my favorite, Lorenz Hart:

When love congeals

It soon reveals

The faint aroma of performing seals,

The double-crossing of a pair of heels,

I wish I were in love again!

Or this:

Your looks are laughable,

Unphotographable,

Yet you're my fav'rite work of art.

Is your figure less than Greek?

Is your mouth a little weak?

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

The Best Actor of the Year is Ralph Fiennes for his effete, petulant fool of a King Richard II, poncing about the palace in embroidered silk. But Mr. Fiennes rose to tragic stature when his demi-god lost the crown-growing bigger as his tormented, usurped Richard grew smaller, to become a meaningless nothing, a mere citizen of this "all-hating world."

Which brings us to our last prestigious category for 2000. The winner of the Unexpected Man Award goes to Tony Kushner, of all innocent people. Permit me to explain. Last summer, I happened to be attending the graduation ceremony of a young friend of mine at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Conn., when Mr. Kushner appeared. To be honest, I was dreading it a little. The speakers at the two other graduations I've attended elsewhere were Cokie Roberts and David Gergen. I was expecting the extremely hot Tom Brokaw-or someone -at Miss Porter's School, but as we all gathered in the tent and the brass band played, I was stunned to see the name of Tony Kushner printed in the program.

It spelled disaster. Miss Porter's, a name that suggests a finishing school of the old order or a traditional WASP bastion never breached, didn't seem a natural theater for the revolutionary dramatist of Angels in America . Or so I thought as he walked solemnly in pale procession to the dais. The graduates of the all-girls school were seated in sedate virginal white on each side of him. We-proud mums and dads and relatives and friends-beamed at them from the surrounding seats. Tony Kushner's cousin was one of the graduates, which was how he got himself into this mess. But I didn't know that at the time.

When he rose to speak, I actually felt nervous for him. How on earth was he going to handle it? But-my goodness!-he gave the best speech I've ever heard. It was certainly the boldest. He introduced himself as a Jewish homosexual socialist dramatist and took it from there. I could see some of the faces in the audience tightening a bit at what he had to say. They were my in-laws, actually. But soon, more or less everyone was on his side, and no one cheered him louder than the delighted graduation class of 2000, who rose at the end to lead the standing ovation.

"Whenever anyone says to you something isn't possible in life," Mr. Kushner exhorted the youngsters in prophet-like mood, "don't listen to them! When they say it can't be done, tell them, 'You are the devil! You are the devil and stay away from me! And leave me alone.'"

We can all drink to that.

Happy holidays everyone!

Ms. Binoche, who surely enchanted us all in The English Patient , is making an extraordinary Broadway debut in David Leveaux's fine production for the Roundabout. She uncannily possesses the same magnetic qualities onstage that she does on film. As Emma, the solidly middle-class English woman who betrays her husband, Robert, by having a seven-year affair with his best friend, she's the beguiling gravitational center of every scene in which she appears.

Ms. Binoche is lovely, of course. But her femininity possesses depth and unpredictable qualities. You cannot be certain what she will do next–an ideal for any actor, but perfect for Mr. Pinter's mercurial heroine, who must change emotionally with every scene. Ms. Binoche plays every note with innate ease–from romantic desolation to fragile, giddy happiness to the unspoken little murders of marital lies. But if we remind ourselves that English is her second language, her achievement is the more stunning.

In a sense, she's speaking two foreign languages–English and Harold Pinter. This has never been a simple business for any actor, except, of course, the English–the traditionally understated, dryly ambiguous, "Pinteresque" English. Ms. Binoche has, firstly, mastered the language by refusing to be "Pinteresque"! She isn't tempted into the traditional traps of playing Pinter–the weighty pauses, the mysterious silences and blind alleys, the dramatic nervous tics of loudly stating the unsaid .

Harold Pinter's Betrayal famously begins at the end and stops seven years earlier at the beginning. The play came at the peak of Mr. Pinter's achievements in the 1970's, which included Old Times and No Man's Land . Some have found Betrayal a mannerist example of the bourgeois evasion masquerading as mystery, a shallow drama about affluent Londoners. (Robert's a wealthy publisher who doesn't like books; Jerry's a literary agent). The details are nice and middlebrow chic–Venice, Torcello, the Lake District, Yeats, Italian restaurants. But the play itself–the lying center of it–is much more than a gimmicky confection.

It's reveling in a game of double ambiguity. On the one hand, the reticent, ambiguous Englishness of the piece is a given. On the other, it's doubly ambiguous because everyone is lying. Who might be telling the truth in any given scene is part of Mr. Pinter's serious game, and playing it backward adds to the intrigue. The perspective is flipped out, a bit arch and very unsentimental. Mr. Pinter is less interested in the exciting, near-invulnerable highs of the illicit affair. He's after the breakdown of love, its inevitable fading. He is saying to us from the desolated outset, when the two ex-lovers meet again in a pub: It ain't going to work out.

Then again, four or five betrayals are better than one. The husband's had affairs for years; Emma has betrayed him; and her ex-lover has betrayed her husband as well as his own wife, who might be having a little fling herself. (Who would blame her?) Mr. Pinter's universe is calculated and unapologetically amoral. It's scarily easy to betray. Betrayal is normal.

"You know what I found out last night," Emma says indignantly about her husband, Robert, in that opening scene. "He's betrayed me for years."

"No," says her ex-lover, Jerry. "Good lord."

Evasions are normal, too. But the comic implications of the play are unusual. Betrayal, after all, is no laughing matter. But the production gets the deadpan delivery right. Director Leveaux–who did such sparkling work with the recent revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing –is a first-rate interpreter of Pinter's work. (He also directed the 1993 Moonlight and No Man's Land .) In Betrayal , he combines a spare, elegant expressionism with its apparent opposite–the concrete, the real. The love affair between Emma and Jerry, now lost in shadowy time, was real once. But the director understands that comedy is the unlikely source of even Mr. Pinter's most menacing dramas. His theater roots were vaudevillian. (He used to write comedy sketches.) Liev Schreiber's Jerry and John Slattery's Robert are therefore like a comedy team in dangerous denial.

"Read any good books lately?"

"I've been reading Yeats."

"Ah, Yeats. Yes."

Robert, the empty, dangerous man, has known for years that Jerry's having an affair with his wife. Yet they remain apparent friends–keeping up appearances, playing the English game. ("Ah, Yeats. Yes.") Language disguises the emotion. Words in their dry reticence might suggest a struggle for power, like the manly game of squash . Besides, they like each other. "I've always liked Jerry," Robert tells his wife. "To be honest, I've always liked him rather more than I've liked you. I should have had an affair with him myself."

Would that Liev Schreiber as Emma's married lover truly understood that the secret of playing Mr. Pinter resides in utterly relaxed naturalness. Accomplished actor though Mr. Schreiber is, he tends to play the subtext too much. He acts the ambiguous language of silence a little too loudly. I didn't sense demons in him, nor the charmer in romantic turmoil. John Slattery's Jerry, on the other hand, could be more coiled, more suggestively reptilian perhaps. He rushes his drunk scene, suggesting hollow desperation powerfully, less so the killer within the killer.

This is a rewarding night at the theater just the same. I must note that the refined design and lighting are by Rob Howell and David Weiner. If you find that you miss the more blatant, messy dirt and lunatic rush of betrayers in love–remember, this is England. Apparent control is the name of Mr. Pinter's understated game. When Juliette Binoche is playing it, it's something to see, and fall for. As I think I may possibly have suggested, she's got it all.

Martin (Alexis Loret) is the central character in the narrative inasmuch as we follow him from his childhood, first with his single mother, Jeanine(Carmen Maura).Then, for some unexplained reason, she turns him over to his hitherto absent father, Victor (Pierre Maguelon), who is respectably married to Lucie (Marthe Villalonga) and has three sons, among whom Martin is brought up as a half-brother. This part of the film is sketchy in the extreme, and seems unduly tentative until we realize near the end that we are being set up for a traumatic Oedipal revelation that will unravel a behavioral mystery.

All we see on the screen, however, is a grown-up Martin fleeing from his father's provincial estate to Paris, where he calls upon his gay half-brother, Benjamin (Mathieu Amalric), an unsuccessful actor who is the black sheep of the family. As fellow outcasts, Martin and Benjamin have bonded more closely with each other than with the rest of the family. Martin meets Benjamin's platonic roommate, Alice (Juliette Binoche), even before he links up with Benjamin. Alice is a repressed violinist who plays with a motley group of small-time musicians at arty concerts and the occasional wedding. Alice has little confidence in her talents as a soloist, and she is at first very cold toward the younger Martin, whose casual good looks stamp him in her mind as a self-adoring narcissist. And sure enough, an eagle-eyed female agent spots him in a restaurant and recruits him as a male model.

For his part, Martin becomes obsessed with Alice, even though she and Benjamin are more sophisticated and artistic than he is. Benjamin is at first amused by Martin's gauche vulnerability, but he becomes jealous of Martin's immediate success as a model. Even more, he dreads the prospect of Alice leaving their cozy (if sexless) nest to go off with the now-solvent Martin. Gay texts and subtexts have often figured in Mr. Téchiné's bisexual universe. But there is no wavering in Martin's heterosexual obsession with Alice, despite his traditionally compromising profession.

Yet when Alice tells Martin that she is pregnant, he goes into a coma that is the precursor to an emotionally disabling depression. Suddenly their roles are reversed. Alice, who had very reluctantly submitted to Martin's aggressive pursuit in the beginning, now plunges into Martin's troubled past to rescue him from the demons that are destroying him. She invades the sanctuaries of Martin's childhood family traumas and finds the key to restoring and preserving his sanity.

Filmed on location in France (Paris and the southwest Cahors region) and Spain (Granada), where Martin's climactic breakdown occurs, Alice and Martin is enriched by its landscapes and cityscapes. In her character's quest for her lover's salvation, Ms. Binoche seizes the opportunity Mr. Téchiné has given her with an astonishingly adventurous role to enthrall us in all her womanly glory. Alice and Martin is not to be missed, particularly in this endless lull of summer.

Who Are These X-Men?

Bryan Singer's X-Men , from a screenplay by David Hayter, based on a story by Tom DeSanto and Mr. Singer, is derived from a comic book originated in 1963 by Marvel Comics guru Stan Lee with a "message" of tolerance toward mutants. In the year 2000, I found myself clueless in the cavernous depths of the Ziegfield Theater, surrounded by what looked and sounded like an army of X-Men followers. Most cheered at the end, but I was left feeling at once isolated and alienated from all the surging knowledgeability vibrating around me. I am neither proud nor ashamed to admit that I had never even heard of X-Men in any context until the advance buzz for the movie intruded on my professional consciousness a couple of months ago. Such reportedly legendary creatures as Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Magneto, Sabretooth, Mystique and Toad burst upon the screen with no preconceptions on my part.

To my untutored eyes, the gadgetry and wizardry involved in X-Men seemed baroque, if not rococo, for the genre. And for a kid-oriented enterprise like this, there were two oddly patriarchal presences incarnated in the benevolent Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the malevolent Magneto (Ian McKellen).

It wasn't hard to follow the plot, such as it was, but I soon became impatient with the formulaic indestructibility of the various X-Men. One minute all hell breaks loose, but after the smoke and fog have cleared, the good guys and gals are either still standing or in the process of resurrection. The only non-radiated human being that gets any attention is Bruce Davison's Joe McCarthy-like Senator Robert Kelly, who wants to pass a law registering all mutants to determine how great a threat they pose to the country.

What is somewhat original in X-Men , besides the virtually equal time given to female mutants, is the confinement of the final struggle for the soul of humankind to two conflicting factions within the mutants themselves. Though I was never bored or offended, neither was I moved, amused or excited. There was no pain, no loss, no feeling, no wit, no humor and not really any charisma. Also, the semi-futurist setting struck me as too much ado about too little and too few for the apocalyptic grandiosity of the project.

In the end, the combatants in X-Men come across as ritualized figures in a pinball machine.

Fassbinder's First Play, Revisited

François Ozon's Water Drops On Burning Rocks , based on the first play ever written by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, emerges as a fascinating meditation by a blithely gay French filmmaker on a play by a tortuously gay German filmmaker of an earlier period. Mr. Ozon is leaping into the breach to give us adult romances at a time when too much of the mainstream industry is preoccupied with the tastes of adolescent males.

The movie begins with one of the most articulate and universally accessible seduction dialogues in all of cinema, and proceeds by ironic increments to a climactic explosion of disillusion. Ultimately it is a wise, scintillating and darkly funny contemplation of the vagaries of all couplings, straight or gay. Although Auden has stated that married couples are more interesting and mysterious than unmarried couples, Ozon and Fassbinder could well respond that all couples face the same debilitating problems of duration and, with them, the inevitable disequilibrium of desire.

Mr. Ozon deserves credit for recognizing Fassbinder's genius in depicting power in relationships in this play, written when he was 19. Ozon is aided in no small measure by the intuitively stylized ultra-Fassbinder performances of Bernard Giraudeau as Leopold, the insurance salesman and master seducer of men and women; his sensitive lover and victim, Franz, played by Malik Zidi; and the two masochistic female participants in the bisexual charade, Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) and Vera (Anna Thomson).

One may argue–and at least one critic already has–about how much the film reflects both Mr. Ozon's and the late Mr. Fassbinder's tastes and styles. In an interview, Mr. Ozon has suggested that he wished to remain faithful to the period–the 70's–and the ethnicity–German rather than French–of the Fassbinder original and such later, explicitly gay Fassbinder films as Fox and His Friends (1975) and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972). Mr. Ozon acknowledges also the influence of Alain Resnais' Smoking/No Smoking (1993) on his ultra-theatrical approach to Water Drops on Burning Rocks, with its blackouts and act announcements.

Fortunately, the result of all this cultural cross-fertilization is superb.