ANOTHER ROMEO AND JULIET TALE OF TRAGIC LOVE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Alternately dour and hyper-tragic, the Oscar-nominated Welsh film ``Solomon & Gaenor'' is intriguing most of the time despite its flailing narrative swings. That's largely due to fine performances all around, a generally insightful script by director Paul Morrison and a juxtaposition of ethnic genres that, while nurturing the conventions of each, makes fascinating formations out of their collision.

It's also ``Romeo and Juliet'' once again, and, like most versions, it reaffirms the concept's durability.

You've seen Welsh mining movies before. You've seen Jewish immigrant movies before. But this is the first Jewish immigrants in a Welsh mining village romance, and it covers the hybrid possibilities pretty thoroughly.

It's 1911, a strike is brewing, and Gaenor (soulful ingenue Nia Roberts), the daughter of a pious, narrow-minded miner's family, is feeling pretty pinched. She was engaged some time ago, but the marriage was called off when her betrothed had some undescribed accident in the coal pit, leaving her neither a virgin nor very fulfilled.

Newly arrived Solomon (Ioan Gruffudd, star of the British ``Horatio Hornblower'' TV series) meets Gaenor while selling fabric door-to-door. Though his Orthodox family members on the other side of town have done little to disguise their Russian origins (the film's dialogue shifts between English and subtitled Yiddish and Welsh), Solomon aspires to assimilation and speaks the King's tongue perfectly. Gaenor thinks she's English. He thinks she's something. She reciprocates.

But Solomon is so worried about revealing his true ethnicity that he claims his name is Sam and that his father is a railway engineer, rarely home and thus unable to be introduced to his new girlfriend. Although Gaenor displays no trace of anti-Semitism, Solomon's fears are understandable. Prejudice is evident everywhere in the community, and when economic times get tough (as they always do in British mine country, or movies set there anyway) the local minister goes so far as to stir up a scapegoat pogrom against the new arrivals.

But there's another reason for Solomon's deception: His parents are just as bigoted as Gaenor's, as their actions prove when evidence of his romance with the gentile becomes undeniable. Ostracism, forced separation, perhaps even martyrdom comes to test the lovers' commitment. Twenty years later, in America, this would all be the stuff of a vulgar but benign comedy called ``Abbie's Irish Rose.'' But in this time and place, it's tragedy of truly biblical proportions.

As overwrought as it gets, however, ``Solomon & Gaenor'' boasts behavioral accuracy down to its pettiest characters, an appreciation of how two long-oppressed ethnic groups maintain their dignity through (often unforgiving) faith and a convincing portrait of everyday life as it's lived by both cultures. And while modern audiences may rightfully despise the small-mindedness that causes Solomon and Gaenor so much difficulty, the movie accurately places some responsibility for their fate on unwise choices the couple make together and individually.

``Solomon & Gaenor'' may go overboard on the grim melodrama at times, but it more often displays emotional, social and ethical intelligence of a high order.

The facts

--The film: ``Solomon & Gaenor'' (R; sex, nudity, violence).

--The stars: Ioan Gruffudd, Nia Roberts.

--Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Paul Morrison. Produced by Sheryl Crown. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

--Running time: One hour, 40 minutes.

--Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Colorado, Pasadena; Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

--Our rating: Three stars