`SUNDAY' VIVIDLY EXPLORES LOST SOULS' SEARCH FOR COMFORT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``Sunday'' is as good as independent filmmaking gets. Brimming with original behavior and designed with aesthetic complexity, it's a stirring example of imagination's redemptive power.

That's also very much what the film is about. The lost souls in ``Sunday'' find comfort from their debilitated, profoundly disappointed lives by playing roles in one another's mental movies. Mistaken identity becomes active deception, guilty revelation is rewarded by willful delusion, and by the end of one very cold day in Queens, two troubled strangers are awed by how far they've escaped together - and daunted by the new limits found at their shared journey's end.

Remarkably, ``Sunday's'' sinewy, humanistic insights come from first time feature-makers, director Jonathan Nossiter and his co-screenwriter James Lasdun. Nossiter has filmed documentaries, and Lasdun is an award-winning author and poet; both of them appear committed to the peculiarities of emotional truth. First among those, they understand, are the fantasies we invent to make life bearable.

Starting out in a subjective, slightly surreal yet semi-verite manner, Nossiter details the morning rituals of men in a New York homeless shelter (some of whom are played by actual residents of the real shelter where it was shot). It is, of course, Sunday, and they all have to get out but be back by early evening.

As the cacophonous, disorienting elements of the soundtrack, cinematography and repetitive editing give way to a more naturalistic style, the focus zeros in on one shlubby, desperate-eyed individual, Oliver (David Suchet). He has nowhere to go but heads there furiously, intently, down one gray, neglected street after another.

Then a woman calls his name. Actually, she calls him Matthew Delacorta, the name of a movie director she claims to have socialized with at a film festival. She's Madeleine (Lisa Harrow), an actress from Britain who's not even making it in Manhattan, let alone Hollywood. She may be screwy, but she's also attractive and interesting. Oliver does not correct her and lets her take him home.

We, and she, later learn that Oliver is an ex-IBM accountant who was not just downsized out of his job, but out of the middle-class life he'd always known. We, and he, find out that she has a bizarre, resentment-charged relationship with an estranged husband (Larry Pine). As the day wears on, they all lie to one another. Quietly but unnervingly, the issue becomes to what extent they can each lie to themselves. Yet Oliver and Madeleine's bond deepens in both startling and nourishing ways.

If any of this sounds reassuringly sentimental to you, forget it. Oliver and Madeleine may be sad little people boldly grasping at straws of happiness, but they're as tough and difficult as their circumstances. Smart, too; while neither is really sure when they're being played by the other, they both have a genius for spur-of-the-moment, improvised manipulation. They win our sympathy, however, by never begging for our indulgence or our pity.

Suchet and Harrow are both British stage veterans. He plays ``Poirot'' on PBS and gained 47 pounds to play Oliver; he also expresses the man's dazed, impacted grief as thoroughly as he captures an American accent. Harrow, who glowed in the fine Australian family drama ``The Last Days of Chez Nous,'' invests her work with a seductive motivational mystery, yet she refuses to reduce Madeleine to just a puzzle. There's an emotional logic governing what she'll reveal and what she'll admit she sees.

It's a hard logic that also drives ``Sunday'' to its ambiguous conclusion. Some have complained that the film ends with too little resolved nor enough clearly explained. The fact is that the movie concludes on the only honest note possible, where the film reel of the mind runs its course and leaves us sitting there, waiting for the next show to start.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Sunday'' (R; nudity, language, sex).

The stars: David Suchet, Lisa Harrow, Larry Pine, Jared Harris.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Jonathan Nossiter. Written by James Lasdun and Nossiter. Produced by Nossiter, Alix Madigan and Jed Alpert. Released by Cinepix Films.

Running time: One hour, 33 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills; Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Four Stars.