`TWO DEATHS' EXPLORES ABUSE OF SEXUAL POWER.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

Equating imperious sexual cruelty with a totalitarian mind-set, Nicolas Roeg's ``Two Deaths'' makes one of the riskiest comparisons that a serious movie could formulate between private behavior and public deportment. Yes, we know power corrupts, and we've all heard stories about pedophilic dictators and sadistic generalissimos.

But how reasonable is it to assume that organized political oppression has its corollary in the imperial bedroom? This alternately talky and gory allegory about the fall of communism and sexual power games makes a vivid if somewhat muddled argument for the existence of such a relationship.

Set in a nameless city in a country that suggests Romania during the early days of perestroika, ``Two Deaths'' cuts back and forth between a violent revolution in the streets and an obscenely lavish dinner party given by a successful, politically well-connected surgeon named Daniel Pavenic (Michael Gambon).

As this Mephistophelean bon vivant serves a sumptuous banquet to three old school friends who have gathered for their annual reunion, the streets below his elegant house are raked with gunfire.

Every so often, the host excuses himself to go downstairs to attend to wounded policemen and soldiers from his security forces, then returns to the feast with an air of unruffled calm. As the evening unfolds, the fighting intensifies, and the conversation among the four becomes a high-flown, philosophical kind of locker-room confession about sexual obsession, power and betrayal.

The revelations begin with a question from one of the guests. Who is the beautiful young mystery woman in a picture Daniel keeps on his mantelpiece? Daniel replies that it is a photograph taken many years ago of Ana Puscasu (Sonia Braga), the housekeeper who is serving the feast. And as this still-striking woman moves silently back and forth from the kitchen bearing one delicacy after another, Daniel regales his friends with the story of his lifelong obsession with her.

His sad, appalling confession, told partly in flashbacks, is the story of a man who, upon finding himself unable to obtain her love, fiendishly contrives the means to possess her.

If Allan Scott's screenplay doesn't succeed in making the details of his conquest literally believable, it is a forceful metaphor for the monstrous exercise of power to gratify an obsession. That obsession is grounded in a paradox that has political reverberations. As much as he can occupy her body, he can never win her love: She is simultaneously possessable and unattainable.

Daniel's candor elicits similar confessions from two of his three guests. One (Nickolas Grace) craves physical humiliation at the hands of prostitutes. Another (Patrick Malahide) has pretended for years that the wife who betrayed him (in a meaningless one-night stand with Daniel) died in a skiing accident.

Not since Roman Polanski's ``Bitter Moon'' has a film offered such a pessimistic, mean-spirited vision of sexual relations as a brutal go-for-broke power struggle in which there are only two roles: victim and tormentor. Where ``Bitter Moon'' was shot through with a dark, Freudian humor and the sense of it all being a nasty practical joke, ``Two Deaths'' strains toward a heavy metaphorical resonance. In one scene, Daniel's pal Cinca (John Shrapnel), a high military official and admitted torturer, drops by long enough to share a chortling reminiscence of their innocent and virtuous youth. The cinematography pointedly compares the preparation of the banquet - the cleaning of fish and the slicing of raw meat - to the carnage in the streets.

Portraying the central figures in this demonic dance, Gambon and Braga make arresting partners. Although the Brazilian actress doesn't have much to do other than serve food and glower ominously as her employer first verbally, then physically strips her bare, she stamps the film with a grave, pensive sensuality.

In a role one can imagine George Sanders would have relished, Gambon plays Daniel with such a disarming lightness that he is charming, despite his actions. The complicated responses his performance evokes lend the film a moral complexity that prevents the central equation from seeming thuddingly glib. ``Two Deaths'' gives a new and ugly meaning to cliches exalting ``the power of love.''

THE FACTS The film: ``Two Deaths'' (R; nudity and some gory scenes of injured people).

The stars: Michael Gambon, Sonia Braga, Nickolas Grace.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Nicolas Roeg. Written by Allan Scott. Edited by Tony Lawson. Music by Hans Zimmer. Produced by Carolyn Montagu and Luc Roeg. Released by Castle Hill Productions.

Running time: One hour, 42 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall.

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Michael Gambon

``Two Deaths''