IT'S A PYRRHIC VICTORY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film critic

THE 18TH-CENTURY French playwright Pierre Marivaux is known for his stylized dialogue and elaborate, sex-farce construction.

If you see this English-language translation of ``The Triumph of Love'' by director Clare Peploe, husband Bernardo Bertolucci, and Marilyn Goldin, you'll probably just think of Marivaux as one of history's more irritating wordsmiths.

The blame may lie more with Peploe than Marivaux, since she admits adding certain elements to her movie - flashes of a modern-day audience observing the cross-dressed goings-on at an ornate Italian villa, barely perceptible but still silly subplots about the discovery of electricity and the like - that only serve to annoy. But we're expected to take the most- transparent deceptions and seductions as seriously as the cartoonishly naive characters in the play do, and while that just doesn't persuade on a big screen, I can't imagine it would work much better on a live stage anymore, either.

The convoluted yet over-obvious plot foregrounds an energetic but ultimately self-satisfied Mira Sorvino as Princess Leonide. Though evidently a just and compassionate ruler herself, she is the daughter of usurpers. Her parents' dispatched rivals had an offspring, too, now a handsome young man named Agis (Jay Rodan).

One day while spying on the potential threat to her throne, the Princess sees a naked Agis emerge from a swim and promptly falls totally in love. Trouble is that, besides the fact that they're technically mortal enemies, Agis has been raised in seclusion by the great philosopher Hermocrates (Ben Kingsley) and his sister, Leontine (Fiona Shaw), both of whom lead a cloistered intellectual life that bans all consideration of love or lust, and brought up Agis with the same set of values.

They wouldn't even allow an attractive woman on their estate, lest she tempt their charge, let alone the princess. So she does what any enterprising gal of her age would do - crashes the pad, along with her handmaiden (Rachael Stirling), dressed in guy drag to try to become buddies with Agis before they're thrown out.

This works, but to buy time to play it out, the princess must also enchant Leontine (by pretending to be male, of course) and Hermocrates (who sees right through her boyish deception, but completely falls for the next ploy, in which she claims to be an adoring female student), while never letting one find out about the other two. Viewers will wonder why any of this works from the get-go, since even at her most swaggering, Sorvino never appears less than regally feminine.

Anyway, things get frantic, leading to quick changes, faster lying and everybody changing their mind when the script requires them to. The point is one that's much older than Marivaux: Rationality hasn't got a chance when desire rears its pretty little head. It all feels immensely precious. Peploe, who unfortunately wants us to enjoy every last inch of her attractive location, paces the thing much too slowly for its nonsensical plot, which needs to fly by briskly to work at all.

Not very well-liked in his time, Marivaux's reputation has risen over the centuries, primarily due to what's often described as the sublime subtlety of his psychologically trenchant language. Call me a throwback, but, in this film's English anyway, it just sounded superficial and verbose.

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE - Two stars

(Rated PG-13: nudity)

Starring: Mira Sorvino, Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw, Jay Rodan, Rachael Stirling.

Director: Clare Peploe.

Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.

Playing: Regent Showcase, Hollywood; Westside Pavilion, West L.A.

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Mira Sorvino attempts to be a master of gender deception in ``The Triumph of Love.''