'STATESIDE' WINS WITH ROMANTIC REALITY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

I HAVE IT on good authority that Reverge Anselmo, writer-director of the quirky but involving ``Stateside,'' put a lot of his own screwed-up rich kid story into this independent romance.

If true - and a myriad of specific details in the movie indicate that is so - it helps. The picture has the unruly texture of a lived story, complete with inexplicable emotional expressions and jaggedly carved relationships. Everything from a father with emphysema carrying around his personal oxygen tank to a demonic Marine drill instructor rhapsodizing about the simple joys of life speak of someone's experience and unforgotten observations. It keeps the thing from going Hollywood, though not from occasionally seeming a wee bit rose-colored.

We're introduced to the object of desire first. Dori Lawrence (``She's All That's'' Rachael Leigh Cook) is an actress and punk rocker who, after a public series of mental meltdowns in 1980 L.A., gets shipped back home to Connecticut for treatment.

In a tony enclave of the New England state, parochial schoolboy Mark Deloach (Jonathan Tucker, who's appeared in such thoughtful films as ``The Deep End'' and ``Virgin Suicides'' - and, also, the ``Texas Chainsaw Massacre'' remake) is in a heap o' trouble. Seems a lover's-lane prank ended up with the severe automotive injury of classmate Sue Dubois (Agnes Bruckner, all grown up but just as superb as she was in ``Blue Car'') and his principal, Father Concoff (Ed Begley Jr. with a mangled Irish accent). Mark was at the wheel.

It's either prison or, through his wealthy daddy's (Joe Mantegna) connections, a stint in the Marines. Mark opts for the latter, although his Southern topkick (Val Kilmer, having nasty fun) does his worst to turn Parris Island into Mark's own personal Abu Ghraib.

But Mark toughs out the torturous training and returns home on leave a better man. So much better, in fact, that he makes it his mission to reconcile with Sue, who, still traumatized, just happens to be sharing a halfway-house room with Dori. (Remember her?)

OK, now the love story can actually start. Mark and Dori take a shine to one another. But she's stil too crazy for a relationship, a fact he naturally does not want to believe. The unlikely couple has its ups, its downs (not to mention her downers) and much bizarrely beguiling pillow talk. It's really quite sweet - when health and sanity aren't at immediate risk, anyway.

At least it's not your average, contrived young love movie. Nor is it really a rebel romance; both Mark and Dori want to do right, and the conditions that conspire against their success are more believably personal than cruel world conditional (although there is some of that, especially toward the end).

``Stateside'' is ultimately about learning to make painful moral choices when the defenses of money, health or most kinds of self-certainty prove ineffectual against harm. I don't know exactly what Anselmo has gone through in his life, but I can say that he's taken valuable lessons from whatever it may have been.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

STATESIDE - Three stars

(R: violence, language, sex, nudity)

Starring: Rachael Leigh Cook, Jonathan Tucker, Agnes Bruckner, Val Kilmer, Joe Mantegna, Diane Venora, Ed Begley Jr.

Director: Reverge Anselmo.

Running time: 1 hr. 36 min.

Playing: Selected theaters, including Pacific Northridge Fashion Center 10, United Artists Pasadena Marketplace 6, Pacific Sherman Oaks 5 and Laemmle Fallbrook 7.

In a nutshell: Semi-autobiographical indie about a rich kid who joins the Marines, then falls in love with a schizophrenic rock chick is peculiar, never predictable and finally quite touching.

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He's (Jonathan Tucker) a bad rich kid-turned-good Marine, and she's (Rachael Lee Cook) a mentally unstable actress and punk rocker who get together in ``Stateside.''