`DANCING' MISSES SOME STEPS ON SCREEN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Redeemed by uniformly moving performances, ``Dancing at Lughnasa'' nonetheless seems far less stirring as a movie than it did on the stage.

Perhaps both the expansiveness of the Irish countryside and the close-up intimacy of the camera work puts Brian Friel's Tony Award-winning insights into their proper, not-as-illuminating perspective. Then again, it may have something to do with the film's director, Pat O'Connor, whose approach tends toward the plodding.

O'Connor has a thing for memory pieces - his last two features were the '50s period ``Circle of Friends'' and ``Inventing the Abbotts'' - and ``Lughnasa'' starts right up with a tremulous voiceover about ``the year when everything changed.'' We're alerted that everything we're about to see will be filtered through a veil of nostalgic melancholy.

That year is 1936, the location rural Donegal, and the narrator Michael Mundy, who was 8 at the time. Played well and without fuss by Darrell Johnston, young Michael is the only male in a houseful of women.

But that's the first thing that changes. The spinster Mundy sisters - humorless schoolmarm Kate (Meryl Streep), Michael's sensual mom Christina (``Dangerous Beauty's'' Catherine McCormack), fun-loving Maggie (Kathy Burke, Queen Mary in the current ``Elizabeth''), slightly retarded Rose (Sophie Thompson, Emma's sis) and quiet, dependable Agnes (Brid Brennan, the only holdover from the Broadway cast) - are all excited about their brother the priest's return from decades of missionary work in Africa.

When Father Jack (Michael Gambon) steps off the bus, however, he's distracted and disoriented. Apparently having suffered a nervous breakdown, he also seems to have traded his Catholic beliefs for tribal mysticism. This amuses most of the sisters but appalls straight-laced Kate, who's embarrassed enough by her other siblings' sinful or silly ways.

Kate is further mortified when Michael's charming absentee father, Gerry (Rhys Ifans), pays a visit on his way to fight the fascists in Spain. She insists that he sleep in the barn; she fails to prevent Christina from joining him. Worse, the ancient pagan harvest celebration of Lughnasa is coming around again, and her sisters' civilized Christian veneers seem to be collapsing in Celtic anticipation.

There's more to fret about, like how the poor Mundys are going to survive in the face of dire economic changes. To underline all the quiet desperation, there's implicit criticism of the Catholic Church, which is set up as the main force responsible for repressing the sisters' natural exuberance. Mostly, though, the movie reinforces the old standby that family beats anything else, even if you usually can't stand your relatives.

Streep does another impeccable accent job as the domineering Kate, who'd be insufferable if she weren't undergoing humanizing self-doubts for what could well be the first time in her bottled-up life. Thompson stands out among the other women; her Rose may be a dope, but her tentative determination to get more out of life makes her weirdly, poignantly heroic.

Oddly, though, for a story about female endurance, Father Jack is the most memorable character. Gambon invests this holy fool with a transcendent serenity that, though clearly a form of madness, looks far preferable to the sensible, dreary lives his sisters must accept.

Of course, being women, they don't have quite the opportunity, in that time and place, for such self-indulgent bliss; the biggest thrill they can expect is good reception on that newfangled radio contraption. When the climactic, title dance breaks out, the joy it represents is so obviously brief it's heartbreaking.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Dancing at Lughnasa'' (PG; language).

The stars: Meryl Streep, Michael Gambon, Catherine McCormack, Kathy Burke, Brid Brennan, Sophie Thompson, Darrell Johnston.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Pat O'Connor. Written by Frank McGuinness, based on Brian Friel's play. Produced by Noel Pearson. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: One hour, 34 minutes.

Playing: Royal, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three stars.

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Photo

Photo: Meryl Streep stars in ``Dancing at Lughnasa.''