A ROCKY FRENCH SUMMER OF ADOLESCENT SEX; `MARIE BAIE' CHRONICLES LUST AND LOSS.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

French legend has it that the two spurs of rock jutting ominously from the sea in the ``bay of angels,'' near Nice, are shaped like the fins of ``angel sharks'' that once upon a time devoured the bodies of invaders shipwrecked while navigating the area's treacherous waters.

In Manuel Pradal's stunningly beautiful film, ``Marie Baie des Anges,'' those rocks and the pearly waters surrounding them become a riveting metaphor for the savagery of teen-age sexual rites.

In this dizzying paganistic ode to Eros, where the camera almost never stops moving, the angel sharks have been replaced by the bodies of restless, hot-blooded adolescents diving and treading water and nipping on each other in the shadowy depths.

The comparison is made explicit in a scene in which a pubescent swimmer with an angelic halo of blond hair is shot and the water slowly turns deep red.

At the center of the film - whose cast largely consists of nonactors gleaned from French stadiums, beaches, Gypsy camps and housing projects - is a brooding, sensual 15-year-old girl named Marie (Vahina Giocante) who runs wild one summer.

Marie snubs the impoverished local boys in favor of a group of arrogant American sailors who take her to nightclubs and hotels. Then, having had their way with her, they discard her with brutal contempt, calling her a Gypsy whore.

Marie ends up sharing a brief idyll with Orso (Frederic Malgras), a rootless, pug-faced petty criminal who robs houses and hangs around with the local youth gangs.

``Marie Baie des Anges'' is filled with ominous images of men in packs. Whether on the prowl for girls or for a fight, the energy of their giddy, reckless camaraderie is charged with physical danger.

In one scene, Marie does a wild Gypsy dance for the sailors who encircle her with a whooping euphoria that you feel could at any second turn ugly. In another scene, a group of sailors in a car are chased by the local boys on motorbikes after exchanging insults.

These scenes give you the feeling that gang rape and gang war are almost the same thing and that, given the right circumstances, they are inevitable eruptions of male aggression.

For a movie that celebrates the raw sexual energy of adolescence, ``Marie Baie des Anges'' is surprisingly unexplicit.

The sexual encounters, instead of being set up the way they are in most films, are brief, gawky episodes in a continual game of roughhouse. If they're intense, they're also no big deal. They're simply part of the natural ebb and flow of the characters' animal exuberance.

These youths have no apparent physical self-consciousness. You sense that none have ever seen a StairMaster or lifted a barbell.

After a while, the images of water, rocks and half-naked bodies merge into a vision of the film's characters as untamed forces of nature who are the fauna of the environment in which they cavort.

Viewed this way, you begin to stop thinking of them as civilized humans bound to any social or moral order, even when they commit crimes.

This dizzy lyricism comes at a price. The movie has no sense of time, and its story line isn't always clear. The life it evokes is one big swirl of ceaseless physical activity and raw sensation.

It is about as far away as you can get from the icky, coy Hollywood ``primitivism'' of ``The Blue Lagoon.''

THE FACTS

The film: ``Marie Baie des Anges'' (R; sexual situations, some strong language and mild violence).

The stars: Vahina Giocante and Frederic Malgras.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Manuel Pradal. Produced by Philippe Rousselet. Released by Sony Pictures Classics. In French with English subtitles.

Running time: One hour, 30 minutes.

Playing: United Artists, Woodland Hills; Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Three Stars.