BUTCHER GETS TO MEAT OF THE MATTER IN `I STAND ALONE'.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

Which of us hasn't at one time or another felt at least a twinge of the despair, fury and misanthropy that engulf the unlucky protagonist of Gaspar Noe's devastating film ``I Stand Alone''?

The story of an unemployed 50-year-old Parisian butcher (Philippe Nahon), whose disgruntled bitterness accumulates into a sustained psychotic rage, suggests a darker sequel to ``Taxi Driver,'' filtered through Dostoyevsky by way of Godard with an added touch of ``Hard Copy.''

``I Stand Alone'' probes as relentlessly into the psychology of nihilism as any movie has ever attempted. It uses the most extreme images and jarring sound effects to brand its character's searing message onto our brains whether we like it or not.

Those devices include the use of amplified gunshots to demarcate scenes, unblinking close-up images of shuddering violence (a pregnant woman is repeatedly kicked and punched in the stomach, a girl is shot in the throat and writhes in agonized death throes), a swatch of hard-core pornography and a continual torrent of hateful epithets directed at almost everybody but especially at those suspected of being homosexual.

Most of the harsh language isn't spoken aloud but is the unedited, voice-over stream-of-consciousness in the boiling mind of a man who sees the entire world as his implacable enemy.

In the most disturbing passages of his monologue, he insists that all human love is essentially self-interested and acquisitive, that no matter what we tell ourselves, we are each of us forever unutterably alone in a meaningless universe. The movie's animalistic imagery, which includes close-ups of human hands slicing and manipulating large chunks of red horse meat, underscores this view of human life as essentially bestial.

``I Stand Alone'' begins as a staccato recap of the butcher's life until 1980, when the story begins. As an impersonal male voice recites his history, snapshots tracing his life and screaming black-and-white tabloid headlines announce such themes as ``justice'' and ``morality.'' Those headlines keep appearing through the rest of the film.

As the story opens, the butcher has already done prison time for assaulting a man who he mistakenly believed had raped his daughter. With the girl institutionalized, our anti-hero, determined to start life over, has moved from Paris to Lille, where he shares a cramped apartment with his pregnant lover and her mother. Unable to find employment at a deli counter (his refusal to smile when told to brighten up costs him the job), he sinks into a despondent rage.

After a brutal domestic quarrel, he returns to Paris and his bleak old neighborhood, where he takes a room in a fleabag hotel and futilely seeks employment in the meat industry.

Each rejection spurs his increasingly violent fantasies of revenge. Reuniting with his daughter, he takes her back to his hotel, where he broods on how to spend the last three bullets left in his gun. As surges of tenderness and self-pity mingle with his vivid fantasies of incest, murder and suicide, the movie offers the tiniest glimmer of redemption.

Despite these glimmerings, ``I Stand Alone'' is unrelievingly grim. Fleshy, hollowed-eyed and glowering impassively, Nahon's butcher suggests a walking piece of meat wired with dynamite. The movie's triumph - if that's what it is - is in the force of its assault. It takes one man's unbearable truth and bashes us in the skull with it. The hurt lingers.

The facts

The film: ``I Stand Alone'' (not rated; ; sex, violence, language).

The stars: Philippe Nahon, Blandine Lenoir, Frankye Pain, Martine Audrain.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Gaspar Noe. Produced by Noe and Lucille Hadzihalilovic. Distributed by Strand Releasing.

Running time: One hour, 32 minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three stars

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PHOTO An unwillingness to smile gets a butcher (Philippe Nahon) fired in ``I Stand Alone,'' which was written and directed by Gaspar Noe.