`DINNER' WINNER; POPULAR FRENCH DIRECTOR VEBER PLAYS HIS `GAME' TO MUCH CRITICAL ACCLAIM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Love and money were just fine, thank you. But respect is also very nice.

Francis Veber has had an abundance of the former and, just recently, a very satisfying smattering of the latter. Arguably France's most successful filmmaker of the last 30 years, Veber has written and/or directed a raft of broad farces (``La Cage aux Folles,'' ``The Tall Blonde Man With One Black Shoe,'' ``La Chevre,'' ``Les Comperes'') that have been huge box-office successes and inspirations for numerous American remakes, from the dire ``Quick Change'' and ``Buddy Buddy'' to impressive hits like ``The Birdcage.''

But even though his films have attracted such respected actors as Gerard Depardieu, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Lino Ventura and Jacques Brel, Veber has rarely impressed critics or colleagues. Until now.

``The Dinner Game,'' just released in America, was typically a big hit in France. The difference was, it also got great reviews, won three Oscar-equivalent Cesar Awards and triggered the first-ever film festival retrospective of Veber's work at last spring's prestigious Cannes conclave.

``I'd made a big effort, myself, to try to say that I don't care about tributes and acclaim, because I would never have them,'' Veber, a trim and understatedly gracious man in his early 60s, said during an interview at his elegant, Mediterranean-style home above the Sunset Strip. ``And then it happened to me, you know? I was surprised how emotional it was and how touched I was. For the first time, the business was telling me, `You are a part of us.'

``I always considered me, like, a craftsman,'' Veber continued in clear, if slightly imperfect, English. ``I was doing my little work, very precisely. It is very difficult to write comedy, you know? But for people to finally tell me I am not a bad craftsman ... that is very good to me.''

``The Dinner Game,'' which Veber adapted and directed from his long-running Paris stage play, is rather revealingly about the dynamic tension between sneering contempt and grudging respect. It stars Thierry Lhermitte as a snooty publisher involved in ``idiot dinners'' with his nasty friends. The object of their dinner game is to seek out and invite the most pathetic losers they can find to the party; the guy who brings the biggest imbecile wins.

Lhermitte's Pierre thinks he's hit paydirt with the bumbling, disheveled, roly poly Francois (Jacques Villeret), a divorced, woebegone tax accountant who pours his energy into building matchstick models of the Eiffel Tower and other such edifices. But through a night of escalating catastrophes, the well-meaning but hopelessly inept Francois practically destroys his false new friend's life - and eventually convinces Pierre of his admirable qualities.

``I was interested in the fact that some people can be contemptuous enough to think that they are smarter than others and choose a jerk in a very arbitrary way,'' Veber explained. ``I wanted to punish one of those guys. This game, you know, exists in Paris. I have friends - friends? - who did it, and I was horrified. So I decided to punish one of them.''

Before you can blurt a knee-jerk ``sounds French to me,'' Veber points out that such callous smugness exists in all cultures.

``Well, you have dogfights in America,'' he said. ``I've heard these horrible stories about college boys in fraternities inviting the ugliest girl to a party and she doesn't know it. Now, that's cruel! I think, in that kind of cruelty, we're equal in every country.''

For all the humor he milks from self-styled-smart vs. unselfconsciously-dumb matchups, Veber strives to humanize both factors in his comedy equation by the time the story's done.

``Many of my films have exactly this same sort of odd couple,'' Veber acknowledged. ``It's the same two guys. One is supposed to be the tough, big, smarter one, and the other is supposed to be more ridiculous and weaker. But by the end, you don't know who is really which.

``There are reasons why I always do these mismatched buddy movies,'' he further explained. ``First, I like friendship, and I'm not very good at writing women. But the main thing is, those two characters are two parts of my own character. I dream of being the strong one, but very often I am the ridiculous one. I want to be Depardieu, the guy who walks into a bar and everybody stops speaking. But when I walk into a bar, I'm more likely to fall on a banana peel.''

Indeed, Veber's sense of humor used to generate more trouble than success. A joke he made while in the army during the Algerian War landed him in the brig, and his tendency to laugh at life contributed to a failed stint in medical school and an undistinguished journalistic career.

He had always wanted to write creatively, but his parents, both authors, had had such little success in the field - his mother was an Armenian immigrant who wrote low-paying romance novels, his Jewish father's career was damaged beyond recovery during the Nazi occupation of Paris - that they dissuaded their son from pursuing it.

But after failing as a doctor, a soldier and a reporter, Veber wrote a play. It got produced, it was popular, it soon led to movie work, and he's been at it ever since. Married for 35 years, he and his wife, Francoise, have two adult sons.

``Both are screenwriters, which panics me,'' Veber deadpanned, chipping off the old block. ``I would prefer for them to be dentists or attorneys, but I cannot do anything. They are writing.''

Now Veber is working for DreamWorks on an American version of ``Dinner Game'' which he plans to direct.

``I thought the French movie was so well-directed that it made sense to have the guy who not only authored that movie, but directed it, do the the remake,'' said Bob Cooper, DreamWorks' head of feature production and development. ``We feel very protected because Francis did such a great job, and he's got one of the most extraordinary track records of anybody in comedy.''

Veber claimed he's past the stage of blindly capitalizing on past successes now.

``Unfortunately, I've reached an age now where I need to do things that I really love 100 percent,'' said Veber, whose two previous American directing jobs split 50-50; ``Three Fugitives'' was a happy experience, ``Out on a Limb'' was not.

But Veber insists that, though he has gotten more selective, the recent acclaim has not gone to his head. Although the ongoing motifs and personal expression that is now evident in his body of work marks him as a true French auteur, he refuses to think of himself as anything more serious than a practitioner of the tricky art of clowning around.

``I'm nowhere in any pantheon,'' he stated bluntly. ``You have to be modest. You can't brag when you write comedies. Colleagues of mine who write one or two serious movies become stars in a snap. I've done 27; it's a very long way.

``At the same time, I kind of like it because you are obliged to work harder and harder. People don't understand how difficult it is to put two guys on a couch and entertain an audience for 80 minutes. You have to make people forget that they don't have their usual special effects, car chases, violence, sex and things like that.

``And if it works, it's a piece of luck.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1) DreamWorks is tapping ``The Dinner Game'' director Francis Veber to make an American version of the popular French movie.

(2) In ``The Dinner Game,'' tax accountant Francois (Jacques Villeret), left, is deliberately chosen by publisher Pierre (Thierry Lhermitte) to be an imbecilic dinner guest.