`ILLUMINATA' A HUMOROUS BACKSTAGE.

Byline: Janet Maslin The New York Times

``Illuminata'' is John Turturro's enormously fond homage to the world of acting, beguilingly presented and filled with knowing backstage humor. And Turturro, who directed the film and wrote its screenplay with Brandon Cole, from Cole's original play, has done a fine job of drawing his cast into the spirit of celebration. The players' enthusiasm for this material is palpable as ``Illuminata'' summons the stock characters of behind-the-scenes theater stories and affectionately invests them with new life.

Set amid a turn-of-the-century New York repertory company with a strongly European flavor, ``Illuminata'' features such divine fixtures as the aging diva, Celimene. She is played gleefully by Susan Sarandon as the kind of actress who sees a fresh-faced young beauty and is moved to remark: ``That is how I shall look years from now. I'm beginning to be able to play ingenues.'' Attacked with equal gusto is the smug, lofty critic with the Transylvanian accent, hilariously played by Christopher Walken as a master of casual cruelty and irrelevant ad hominem observations.

When this critic arrives to review the troupe's work, he winds up writing about the long eyelashes of a male bit player. Bill Irwin is cast amusingly as the reluctant object of the critic's affections. ``There is nothing I like better than things like this,'' the critic confides when one of the actors goes wild and apparently drops dead on stage.

Turturro and his somberly beautiful wife, Katherine Borowitz, play out the section of ``Illuminata'' that gives it ballast and heart. The filmmaker appears as Tuccio, an aspiring playwright involved with Borowitz's Rachel, the company's reigning star. These two work out a delicate balance of love and ambition during the course of the story and deliver what are its most earnest and also most theatrical sentiments. ``Illuminata'' is both the title of Tuccio's play and what he eventually calls Rachel, as the light of his life, after the film has taken them down quite a rocky road.

Meanwhile, Beverly D'Angelo brazens her way delightfully through the film as one of the theater's owners, with a comic yet movingly rueful performance from Donal McCann as her weaker mate. (McCann, who died in July, is well remembered for his role in John Huston's elegiacal film ``The Dead.'') The large and zestful cast also includes Rufus Sewell, breathing funny new life into the standard-issue myopic leading man; Ben Gazzara as an actor who can't build a character without the right hat, and Aida Turturro and Leo Bassi as the story's earthiest clowns.

Turturro, who directs ``Illuminata'' well enough to let the viewer stop noticing that he directed it, gives the film more visual variety than might be expected. There are puppets and curtain calls, an exotic lair for Sarandon's grande dame, and a quaint and invitingly dreamlike stage set. The flakes drifting onto this set are bread crumbs at an early stage, flower petals by the time the film is over.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Illuminata'' (R; mild profanity, sexual situations, partial nudity).

The stars: Katherine Borowitz, Beverly D'Angelo, Ben Gazzara, Bill Irwin, Donal McCann, Susan Sarandon, Rufus Sewell, John Turturro and Christopher Walken.

Behind the scenes: Directed by John Turturro. Written by Brandon Cole and Turturro. Produced by John Penotti and Turturro. Released by Artisan Entertainment.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Landmarks' Westside Pavilion Cinemas in West Los Angeles and Laemmle's Colorado in Pasadena.

Our rating: Three stars.