`SAME OLD SONG' UNITES CHARACTERS THROUGH MELODY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

``Same Old Song,'' Alain Resnais' latest exercise in elegant, formal experimentation, is lovely and slightly irksome.

It's a homage to the departed English teleplay writer Dennis Potter (``Pennies From Heaven,'' ``The Singing Detective'') from the French master of romantic memory crunch (``Last Year at Marienbad,'' ``Hiroshima, Mon Amour,'' ``Providence''). This means that characters suddenly break into snippets of popular song, lip-synced over the original recordings.

This apparently went over well in France, where the music is, of course, familiar. The film won some major Cesar Awards, which are the country's Oscar equivalent, and earned the septuagenarian director his best reviews in many years.

A smooth and compelling roundelay of six intersecting lives in contemporary Paris, everything about ``Same Old'' translates well except the songs. The whole effect of the gambit depends on familiarity with the recordings, something most of us outside of the French-speaking world can't claim. Rather than evocative, the songs become distracting for anyone following the film by subtitles.

Resnais' basic strategy varies from Potter's. Rather than performing their inner fantasies when the songs come on, characters just slip them into the flow of their conversation and continue the discussion when the music's over. Occasionally, the songs represent what a person is silently thinking, but, for the most part, listeners just nod along as though they're hearing nothing unusual. The point is to make the artificial device as narratively unobtrusive as possible while still imparting feeling and meaning - a quixotic but fun idea, but again dependent on acquaintance for effect.

The film charts the mostly romantic but also professional and health travails of six interrelated characters. There is Nicolas (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a middle-aged man planning a move back to Paris who, for a variety of reasons, can't choose an apartment for his family. His frustrated real-estate agent Simon (Andre Dussollier) is in love with graduate student Camile (Agnes Jaoui), who is in love with Simon's untrustworthy boss Marc (Lambert Wilson) and is the younger sister of Nicolas' former girlfriend, Odile (Sabine Azema). An excitable type, Odile is unappreciatively balanced by her deliberate, stick-in-the-mud husband Claude (Pierre Arditi).

The characters overcome animosities and bond unexpectedly, primarily through shared miseries. It's a sophisticated weave of complicated, mature emotions, scripted by actors Bacri and Jaoui and directed with assured delicacy.

Nostalgia would, of course, come more easily to French audiences. But the scenario's interest in history and the uncertainties of the future, also connects the characters in true Resnaisian manner - and in a way that transcends any cultural barrier.

The facts

The film: ``Same Old Song'' (Not rated; some strong language).

The stars: Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azema, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Andre Dussollier, Agnes Jaoui, Lambert Wilson.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Alain Resnais. Written by Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri. Produced by Bruno Pesery. Released by Merchant Ivory Films.

Running time: Two hours.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Photo

PHOTO Pierre Arditi, left, and Sabine Azema star in `Same Old Song,' Alain Resnais' film about the lives of six interrelated characters.