BUOYANT `TRAIN' RIDES A WARM FANTASY TO FREEDOM.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

The fact that for many people a Holocaust comedy is oxymoronic hasn't prevented filmmakers from Ernst Lubitsch to Mel Brooks to Roberto Begnini from finding antic humor in the ultimate 20th-century horror. Whether that humor strikes us as funny or appalling depends on our personal responses to the unthinkable. That's why some who watch ``Train of Life,'' Radu Mahaileanu's fable about a Jewish village somewhere in Central Europe that beats the Nazis by building its own deportation train and riding it to freedom, may have the queasy feeling of seeing history trivialized. Others will find a redemptive warmth in its fantasy of self-deliverance accomplished through the ultimate pseudo-assimilation of Jews posing as Nazis.

``Train of Life,'' which open Friday, has already struck a popular chord, having won the 1999 Sundance Film Festival audience award and several other international honors. For this rollicking movie has the bustling energy and narrative momentum of a 1940s ``Fiddler on the Roof.'' With its giddy klezmer lilt and a final image borrowed from the Broadway revival of ``Cabaret,'' it also seems ready-made for adaptation into a stage show. All that's missing in the movie with its proudly shticky screenplay and scenes neatly arrayed like musical-comedy set pieces are the actual songs, and it is easy to see where they would fit.

With its tale of the village fool who returns from over the mountains to his shtetl bearing the alarming news of the Nazi final solution, ``Train of Life'' belongs to a time-honored Jewish storytelling tradition in which an idiot with special intuitive powers proves invaluable to the community. When Schlomo the Dreamer (Lionel Abelanski) delivers his terrible news, he is immediately taken seriously by the village elders. Led by the rabbi (Clement Harari), the community constructs its own deportation train to take the entire village to Palestine by way of Russia.

The purchasing of the train cars, the refurbishment of a battered old locomotive and the sewing of bogus Nazi uniforms present no major problems. Where the villagers run into trouble is in the assignment and acting out of roles. Those who have the best German accents are drafted to impersonate the fake Nazis piloting the train. Because Mordechai the Woodworker (Rufus) speaks the best German, he is chosen to be the commandant who must improvise convincing explanations to the real Nazis encountered on the trip.

A worrywart suffering from ulcers, Mordechai takes to his role with a surprising relish. Before long he is behaving like a Nazi caricature, barking orders and making himself generally obnoxious. But in leaving their shtetl, the villagers take along their internal problems. As the train speeds toward the Russian border, Yossi (Michael Muller), a homely mama's boy desperate for respect, foments a Communist rebellion among the passengers. His revolution is partly a sulky reaction to his rejection by the lusty Esther (Agathe de la Fontaine), the most beautiful girl in the village, who frets that she may die a virgin and spends the journey shopping for a lover.

The train finds itself threatened by friends as well as foes. More than once, it is nearly blown up by a group of Resistance fighters who, even after watching the passengers (including the fake Nazis) celebrate the Sabbath in an open field, fail to realize that these people are allies.

What saves ``Train of Life'' from sinking into sudsy Holocaust kitsch is its sustained comic buoyancy. The movie doesn't pretend for an instant to be anything more than a rustic comic fairy tale. As the director (an exile from Ceausescu's Romania), acknowledges in the production notes, even the most ingeniously constructed ghost train could never have eluded Nazi detection.

The facts

The film: ``Train of Life'' (R; sexual situations and one glimpse of nudity).

The stars: Lionel Abelanski, Rufus, Clement Harari, Michael Muller, Agathe de la Fontaine and Bruno Abraham-Kremer.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu; in French, with English subtitles. Released by Paramount Classics.

Running time: One hour, 43 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Town Center 5 in Encino, Laemmle's Playhouse 7 Cinemas in Pasadena, Laemmle's Music Hall in Beverly Hills and Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three stars.