NO ILLUMINATION IN 'LUMINARIAS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

``Luminarias,'' a girlfriend comedy/romance in the vein of ``Waiting to Exhale,'' tries to do for Latinas what that film did for African-American women. It's not a particularly good movie, but it is an interesting one in the way that it laces tougher-minded stuff through soapy and sitcomish standard issue.

Adapted from a stage play that star Evelina Fernandez wrote for L.A.'s Latino Theater Company and directed by her husband, Jose Luis Valenzuela, the film focuses on four professional women from East L.A. They have the usual trouble finding good men and, once located, more difficulty figuring out what to do with them.

But along with the bad sex jokes, shouting matches and tearful mutual support these things always indulge in, the story also asks probing questions about ethnicity and class that give the lightweight, sometimes awkward dramatics some real ballast. Of course, these questions are generally solved in simplistic, dishonest ways - this is a girlfriend movie, after all - but it still beats cliched dialogue and forced eccentricity, of which there is too much here.

Andrea (Fernandez) is a lawyer whose charming, no-good husband embarrasses her by kissing a blonde at their anniversary party. Sofia (Marta DuBois) is a psychiatrist who's not real thrilled with her Mexican roots and lives on the Westside. Lilly (Angela Moya) is an artist with self-esteem issues that have led to a weakness for undocumented non-workers who invariably turn out to have wives somewhere. Irene (Dyana Ortelli) designs kooky clothes and loves Latin men, but is edgy since she gave up sex for Lent.

The main storyline involves Andrea's rebound romance with a Jewish attorney, Joseph, played by Scott Bakula. He's an adversary in court, but her real problem is that, well, he's white - and stirs up decades worth of her own racial anger the deeper she falls in love with him.

The other women's romantic difficulties get shorter shrift. Basically, Sofia falls, against all her personal aspirations, for an immigrant bartender; Lilly develops a nurturing relationship with a responsible Korean gentleman whose parents don't approve; and Irene can't wait for Easter. They meet regularly at one another's homes or offices, or at the title hillside restaurant, where tequila is consumed in large quantities.

Acting is generally decent, sometimes caricatured. Actually, the best performance, both comically and dramatically, comes from Seidy Lopez, who plays a young mother coping with stuff that makes the older women look trivially self-absorbed.

Valenzuela opens the film with a long steadicam shot at a party that isn't going to have Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson shaking in their boots. But he soon dispenses with unnecessary cinematic flourishes and lets the women take over. They have a good rapport: You believe that they've been friends for many years, with all their instant understanding of one another, their easy, intimate abrasiveness and their all-embracing forgiveness.

And of course, it's nice to have a movie that looks at a slice of life no others bother to. You just wish that ``Luminarias'' would have emphasized its sharper observations better than a hundred generic friends-and-lovers comedies.

The facts

--The film: ``Luminarias'' (R; language, sex).

--The stars: Evelina Fernandez, Scott Bakula, Marta DuBois, Dyana Ortelli, Angela Moya, Seidy Lopez, Robert Beltran, Cheech Marin.

--Behind the scenes: Directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela. Written by Evelina Fernandez. Produced by Sal Lopez. Released by New Latin Pictures.

--Running time: One hour, 40 minutes.

--Playing: Citywide.

--Our rating: Two and one half stars.