CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

The best moment of Patrick Stettner's darkly funny ``The Business of Strangers'' comes about 20 minutes into the film. Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) receives a phone call from the home office. It's a call she has been dreading since her secretary told her that her company's board had convened a meeting in her absence. But instead of being handed her walking papers, Julie learns that she's been promoted ... to CEO.

Rather than being elated by the good news, Julie's face turns almost ashen. Suddenly everything she has spent the past 20 years working toward has been handed to her and yet Julie doesn't feel elation or even satisfaction. It's a hollow victory won in the sterile environment of an airport hotel.

Watching Channing's facial expressions and body language during this scene is worth the price of admission alone, but ``The Business of Strangers'' offers other pleasures as well. Stettner, in his filmmaking debut, has a keen eye for the small sacrifices and humiliations that businesswomen of a generation ago had to endure, and ``Strangers'' offers a heartfelt and humane portrait one such woman at a crossroads.

For his filmmaking debut, Stettner is blessed two have two leads - Channing and Julia Stiles - that convincingly bring alive nuances in their characters that would have been lost on lesser actresses. Stiles plays Paula, a company underling whom Channing's Julia fires in a moment of duress only to meet her later in her hotel bar. Paula is a provocateur in the classic sense of a Shakespearean jester, there to show the queen the truth about all the compromises she has made on her way to the top.

The two women bond (Julie has no one else to celebrate with) and, after drinking an ocean of alcohol, meet Nick (Frederick Weller), a headhunter with Julie's company. Slick Nick has time on his hands and some pretty obvious fantasies about the two women. What he doesn't know is that Julie and Paula have spent the night playing increasingly dangerous power games with some serious sexual undertones. When Nick knocks on their hotel room door, he has no idea he's about to open Pandora's box.

To his credit, Stettner doesn't have any political agenda here; ``Strangers'' doesn't shy away from sexual politics, but it keeps the sermonizing at bay. The movie has a fair amount of black humor, and the brutality of its last act is carried off in a surreal, dream-like manner that serves as a potent culmination to Julie's flight to self-awareness. Julie might not recognize herself in the morning, but she's sure going to like that image in the mirror a lot better.

``THE BUSINESS OF STRANGERS''

(Rated R: language and some sexuality)

The stars: Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Patrick Stettner. Released by IFC Films.

Running time: One hour, 23 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Fallbrook 7 in West Hills; Laemmle's Playhouse 7 Cinemas in Pasadena; Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood; Landmark's Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three stars

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Stockard Channing is an executive struggling with her own success in the dark comedy ``The Business of Strangers.''