A WARM, FEELING DEBATE ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

French director Patrice Leconte (``Monsieur Hire,'' ``The Hairdresser's Husband,'' ``The Girl on the Bridge'') continues along his obsessive way with ``The Widow of Saint-Pierre.'' Those who passionately believe that the death penalty is wrong will find the film a reassuringly stacked, if logic-strained, little fable for their cause. But Leconte fans will appreciate a much richer, gnarlier foray into the dangerous realm where fervid commitment takes over lives to the extent of threatening them and all about them, for better and for worse. It's about the sensuality of self-righteousness and, to balance, the mystery of motive.

The film is very specifically set on the title island, a small French fishing outpost off the Atlantic coast of Canada, as the Second Republic was entering its political death throes in the late 1840s. One night, after being lost in a dinghy on the fog-shrouded sea for four days, two rescued fisherman get drunk and decide that they must learn if their skipper, who presumably gave up on them, is a fat or simply a large man. This requires gutting him like a cod to find out, which naturally leads to an open- and-shut murder case.

One of the convicts is himself killed in a mob-instigated accident. The other condemned man, Neel Auguste (the Yugoslavian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, teddy bearish in the best way in his acting debut), is imprisoned at the local garrison while the colonial authorities wait for Paris to authorize the delivery of a guillotine (the island has none) and an executioner to operate it (ditto).

As the months go by, the military commandante, known only as the Captain (Daniel Auteuil), allows his wife, known only as Madame La (Juliette Binoche), to employ Neel at various prettifying duties around the fort. Soon, she's escorting the prisoner across the ice to patch roofs on a nearby island; gorgeous natural photography goes with this. Next thing you know, Neel is everybody's favorite helper. He even risks his life to rescue a tavernkeeper when her saloon, while being wheeled to a new location, plunges out of control down a cobblestoned incline.

Neel's presence also has an invigorating effect on the Captain and La's love life. While the town's elite gossip that surely her criminal protege is having an affair with the lady, this is hardly the case. Physically, anyway. What Neel has inspired is an intense desire in Madame La to see that his life is spared, and that passion spreads to other aspects of her life. The Captain supports her cause for both the obvious reason and out of a slightly crazy, idealistic gallantry of his own that, it's evident, led to problems at previous posts.

Anyway, by the time the dreaded guillotine arrives, practically the entire population of Saint-Pierre, led by the Captain and La, is determined to save the reformed killer's life. The only folks who insist on justice being done are the pompous governor and his cronies ... and it seems, to La's consternation, one Neel Auguste.

What motivates Neel to assist his own doom? Is it his final step toward saintliness, or just an inevitable result of the lesser level of goodness to which he has risen? And even though the scenario stacks its deck against the authorities, how is their basic argument so wrong? And jeez, what is it about the main couple that compels them to invest, and risk, so much in Neel's fate? Considering the times, they're either enormously progressive or romantically oblivious. Maybe both. Maybe something else.

No simple answers; no simple questions in this one either, really. Even the title is open to interpretation. The press material takes pains to inform us that ``widow'' was French slang for guillotine at the time, but the chopper is not the only thing from whom Saint-Pierre taketh. Leconte succeeds here at what he fell short of accomplishing in his Versailles-set comedy of bad manners, ``Ridicule'': setting the near-insanity of personal fixations in a wider socio-political context. Like his more hermetically sealed movies, the world of ``Saint-Pierre'' is still mad and filled with feeling.

``THE WIDOW OF SAINT-PIERRE''

(Rated R: violence, sex)

The stars: Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil and Emir Kusturica.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Patrice Leconte. Written by Claude Faraldo. Produced by Gilles Legrand and Frederic Brillion. Released by Lions Gate Films.

Running time: One hour, 48 minutes.

Playing: Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Royal, West L.A.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil star in ``The Widow of Saint-Pierre.''