Bon-bon appétit

By LAURA MILLER "Celestial Clockwork" scores high on the Important Summer Fluff chart "Celestial Clockwork" Directed by Fina Torres that narrow sliver of the filmgoing audience that despises violent blockbusters must be gasping with desperation by now. Fortunately for them, movie distributors have realized that the right art picture, released during the once-desolate (from the genteel perspective) summer months, can do quite well by itself. Cheerful little films like "Belle Epoque" and "Cinema Paradiso" skitter like resourceful mammals amid the titanic, reptilian paws of Hollywood monsters, picking up the plentiful crumbs that the larger animals leave behind. "Celestial Clockwork," a new movie by the Venezuelan-French director Fina Torres, hopes to follow suit. In 85 minutes of tutti-frutti meringue, Torres tells the story of Ana (Adriana Gil), a Venezuelan bride who panics at the altar and flees to Paris to pursue a career as an opera singer. Once there, she falls in with the expected wacky crowd, of the expected multi-ethnic composition and varied sexual orientations. She faithfully follows her dream (which takes the immediate form of the starring role in an opera staged by an elusive Italian impresario) despite the conniving of a spiteful and envious videographer named Celeste (Arielle Dombasle). Although not particularly original or inspired, "Celestial Clockwork" succeeds handsomely as entertainment, mostly because it doesn't try too hard, advances no earnest messages and, blessedly, never resorts to the calculated, treacly sentimentality of "Cinema Paradiso" (the kind of movie that makes me want to kick puppies). Torres has a Spike Lee-esque love for color, artifice and mischief: The title sequence skips blithely from shots of a blue papier-maché globe (zooming in on Venezuela), a towering scarlet and gilt altar, a mint green taxi cab (in which Ana makes her escape from the church), and pretty soon we're looking at a montage of Parisian landmarks. It's a blend of traditional and hipster corn -- the worship of Paris and of Latin folk aesthetics -- but Torres doesn't settle on any of the images long enough to exhaust its modest impact. The director also has a flair for silly, low-tech special effects, particularly when it comes to the movie's villainess. This gaunt vixen, with her razor-sharp cheekbones and swollen lips, already has an artificial quality, suggestive of plastic surgery or transsexualism. But when Torres inserts a roiling cloud mass behind her head, or makes her eyes shoot out evil rays or gives her a glowing green potion to dispense, she becomes even weirder, equal parts Snidely Whiplash and Madonna. Celeste's magnum opus, a video called "La Pinata," is another simultaneously ridiculous and fun pastiche, starring a Warhol-colored Dombasle in dominatrix gear, strutting and winking to bad, catchy Europop. The best parts of "Celestial Clockwork," however, belong to the older players. Michel Debrane as Ana's voice teacher and Evelyne Didi as Alcanie, an older psychiatrist who becomes Ana's friend -- and later, implausibly, something more -- have all the superior bits. When Ana and Alcanie meet, the shrink is doing her morning "emotional aerobics," daily sessions of crying and laughing intended to keep her affect in top form. "I've seen you before," she says musingly to Ana. "Are you one of my patients?" Didi can jack a scene into that state of semi-hysteria that makes for sublime screwball comedy, and every so often she gets to in "Celestial Clockwork." The movie's weakest link, however, is its star, an unexpected deficiency since Gil's cross-dressing character was the swashbuckling high point of the otherwise conventional "Belle Epoque." She appears to have lost all her gumption in the role of dewy Ana. It's a toss-up over which is the most unconvincing: Ana as opera singer or the sapphic kindling with Alcanie. No one could produce such sounds without, at the very least, standing up straight (the singing is patently dubbed), and Ana seems too embryonic to possess any sexuality to speak of. On various occasions Gil attempts to convey that she is being transported by lofty musical inspiration, but instead she looks like she's about to either sneeze or recite the alphabet for the first time. There is a line between innocence and idiocy, and Gil keeps losing track of its precise location. Nevertheless, the cast of supporting characters and the movie's "I Love Lucy"-style comedy of errors keep things breezing along to a suitably upbeat conclusion. A little Schubert, a little Rossini and some salsa to send them out of the theaters tapping their toes -- in the cinematic dog days of midsummer, "Celestial Clockwork" will do very nicely, thank you.