`MON HOMME' PUSHES ENVELOPE OF TASTE, BELIEF.

Byline: Janet Maslin The New York Times

Saw in hand, Bertrand Blier climbs out on a limb to tell his latest tale of sexual politics and capricious love. Even for Blier, the agent provocateur behind ``Going Places'' (1973) and ``Get Out Your Handkerchiefs'' (1977), this is a film that flirts with outrage. In ``Mon Homme,'' a prostitute named Marie proudly defends her profession, then defies expectation by falling in love with a derelict. She eagerly transforms him into her abusive pimp and ecstatically enslaves herself. Many complications ensue.

Without revealing the upshot of this story, it's safe to say that ``Mon Homme'' ends with an exclamation that could accompany many of Blier's sexual fables: ``Forgive me, women.'' The filmmaker's mischievous intelligence and dark whimsy (well displayed in relatively recent films like the 1986 ``Menage'' and the especially wry 1988 ``Too Beautiful for You'') do leaven his misogyny, but it remains central to his point of view. That is his business, but the greater problem here is a dearth of clarity and essential surprise in Marie's story. Most of this film's insights about its sprightly prostitute are as old as her profession.

Marie, played with such incongruous elegance by Anouk Grinberg that she looks ladylike in bathing suit and fishnets, begins the film with a stagy monologue directed for the camera. Describing her work as ``joy, pure joy,'' she offers a long and defiant explanation of why she loves it. A parade of johns treks upstairs to Marie's hotel room, serving to illustrate her point. (Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Pierre Leaud create the illusion of a stellar cast for ``Mon Homme,'' but they play nothing more than a couple of these quick walk-ups.) Marie also debates morality with a staid-looking matron and winds up broadening this woman's horizons by persuading her to turn a trick.

But if housewives can become prostitutes, then a hooker can become bourgeois with equal ease. ``Mon Homme'' sends Marie down that road as she falls under the spell of Jeannot (Gerard Lanvin), a homeless man lying beside a garbage pail. Marie invites him to her room and gives him dinner. Jeannot is Frenchman enough to assess the food and wine appreciatively, then enthrall Marie with his sexual expertise. As he asserts his dominance, the film observes Marie's rapture with near-pornographic zeal.

Marie is besotted and transformed, happy even when Jeannot practices hitting her. ``You'll be a nice pimp,'' she declares. ``A caring pimp. Who takes me to the fights. Who brings gifts. Who remembers birthdays.'' Blier is not without sardonic style even when his characters' longings are unamusingly trite.

It turns out that in falling for Jeannot, Marie is creating a monster. Soon he is slick, debonair and busily seducing other women. Jeannot's complicated efforts to make a prostitute out of Sanguine (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), a voluptuous manicurist, create the kind of menage that Blier has exploited more wittily in other films. The characters' sexual attitudes bespeak larger role-playing and gender politics, though seldom in ways that give ``Mon Homme'' much dramatic interest. Compared with Blier's much better work, this parable lacks punch.

Having revealed that men are restless and women have their price, that marriage and prostitution are opposite sides of the same coin and that love is a tango between master and slave, ``Mon Homme'' runs out of inspiration. In this film's battle of the sexes, nobody wins.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Mon Homme'' (not rated).

The stars: Anouk Grinberg, Gerard Lanvin, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Pierre Leaud.

Behind the scenes: Written (in French, with English subtitles) and directed by Bertrand Blier. Produced by Alain Sarde. Released by Artificial Eye Film Co.

Running time: One hour, 38 minutes.

Playing: Landmark Samuel Goldwyn Pavilion Cinemas, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.