AFTER THIS YEAR'S LOSERS, A WINNER IN 'LOVE & SEX'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Taking a tip from Woody Allen, writer-director Valerie Breiman based much of her debut feature, ``Love & Sex,'' on a funny relationship - that's funny ha-ha and funny insane, like everybody's - she once had.

The results aren't ``Annie Hall'' calibre, but they are remarkably more recognizably human than what passes for most movie romantic comedy. ``Love & Sex'' is impolite, messy, obsessive and embarrassing. It seems like love, in other words, not to mention like everyone's other favorite subject.

Famke Janssen, the strapping Dutch model last seen playing it cool in ``X-Men,'' carries the film with a protean emotional bewilderment and delightfully awkward physicality as Kate. A writer for one of those monstrous women's magazines that are always making up authoritative articles on what works with men, Kate one day gets sick of all the fabrication and thinks back about where she's personally gone wrong.

Several quick vignettes - her father-figure period with a married guy during college, the cute-but-dumb action movie actor liaison - bookend the central disaster of her love life. His name is Adam (``Swingers' '' Jon Favreau), a painter of grotesque psyche scapes. He started out all cuddly overconfident, stuck by her through an unplanned pregnancy and devastating miscarriage, then let his sexual paranoia - Kate had a lot more experience going in - scuttle what was shaping up as a pretty good thing.

Then, after they broke up, things really got intense.

Breiman approaches the usual ``Why are guys so weird and can't I keep one?'' neurotics with a beguiling, shambling earthiness. The film's title is not deceptive; when at a loss for how to express a worrisome feeling, Kate unerringly goes carnal with often uproarious consequences. Just one small but telling example: Of all the jokey tongue-kissing that we've been subjected to in this summer's comedies, this movie's kisses are the only ones that actually make you chuckle instead of wince because they're expressions of character rather than cheap grossout displays.

On the other hand, ``Love & Sex'' has its share of pat gags, like Adam's playmate parade of rebound bimbos, each one younger, dumber and blonder than the last. But Breiman has a way of using obvious jokes as springboards for smarter humor, and in much the same way she can stretch standard contemporary rom-com dialogue into very specific, personal revelation.

All of this gives ``Love & Sex'' a shaggy, lived-in kind of feeling. Very enjoyable ambience - and if Breiman can recapture it in future projects that she hasn't necessarily lived out, she'll be a formidable voice in film comedy indeed.

The facts

--The film: ``Love & Sex'' (R; sex, language, nudity)

--The stars: Famke Janssen, Jon Favreau.

--Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Valerie Breiman. Produced by Timothy Scott Bogart, Martin J. Barab and Brad Wyman. Released by Lions Gate Films.

--Running time: One hour, 22 minutes.

--Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; NuWilshire, Santa Monica.

--Our rating: Three stars

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Jon Favreau and Famke Janssen star in ``Love & Sex,'' an ``Annie Hall''- like romance that opens today.