NOT EVERYTHING COMES UP ROSES IN GYPSIES' STORY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

In the strange, unsuccessful but not uninteresting ``The Man Who Cried,'' arty British filmmaker Sally Potter (``Orlando'') tries to make a universal statement about how all displaced people are united, whatever their differences, by shared trauma ... and, um, their love for music.

Sound theoretical? Plays that way, too. But at least Potter tries to cover all of her bases, and takes us on some bizarrely intriguing detours while she should have been paying more attention to strengthening her narrative drive and credible character development.

Set in Russia, England and, mostly, Paris between the world wars, the film balances moments of magic with ludicrous miscalculation, the occasional revealing bit of behavior against overacting both laughable and enjoyable.

We're introduced to the main character, a little Russian Jewish girl named Fegele (Claudia Lander-Duke), who leads a somewhat enchanted life in a rural shtetl with her loving father (Oleg Yankovskiy), a Yiddish entertainer. Despite it being the late 1920s, Dad somehow has an opportunity to get out of the budding Stalinist state and make a new start in America, where he vows to bring Fegele as soon as he's established.

But before he can send for the child, a pogrom of some sort destroys the village. Fegele is somehow put on a westbound ship but is yanked off in England. Renamed Suzie and raised by cold-fish foster parents, the understandably diffident girl only opens up in dance and singing classes.

Now played by Christina Ricci, Suzie decamps to a chorus girl job in Paris. She still doesn't talk much, but she doesn't need to; her gentile Russian roommate, Lola (Cate Blanchett), does enough yakking for the both of them, especially regarding her strategies for snagging rich boyfriends.

Lola falls for a preening Italian opera star, Dante Domino (John Turturro), who has fascist sympathies. Suzie's big eyes land on a mysterious Gypsy horseman, Cesar (Johnny Depp, with the same hair he wore as the Traveler in ``Chocolat''), who has a minor role in the opera. Separately, the girls learn - gasp - that reactionary egomaniacs don't make the most reliable lovers but guys who commune with their stallions can be pretty hot ones.

Then the Nazis come and, as they tend to do, screw up everything.

Blanchett is the enjoyable ham here, masticating every rolling, Slavically tinged syllable like it was the best piece of caramel she's ever tasted. Turturro is the ridiculous scene-chewer, his character being operatic and all; to compound the problem, the gawky New York actor was not made to wear florid stage costumes.

Depp is a borderline caricature when in his smoldering, man-of-few-words (on a white horse, no less) mode; he's a little more tolerable, but no less of a cliche, once he opens up and starts spouting proud man-of-his-people platitudes.

Ricci's primarily reactive performance is the film's most interesting. Robbed of her home, her family and her very name, Suzie is played as something of a ghost, yet Ricci still holds the film's center with native intelligence while those all around her careen through overworked poses.

The film's main point about the Holocaust is that the Germans targeted Gypsies as well as Jews, which Potter seems to think is some kind of news flash. What she doesn't get is that, by portraying her Romany encampment characters as sexy salt-of-the-earth types who, boy, can really sing and dance, she's indulging her own brand of pernicious racial profiling. Less stereotyping all around might have made ``The Man Who Cried'' dramatically equal to its thematic ambitions.

``THE MAN WHO CRIED''

(Rated R: violence, sex, language)

The stars: Christina Ricci, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Johnny Depp.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Sally Potter. Produced by Christopher Sheppard. Released by Universal Focus.

Running time: One hour, 42 minutes.

Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; NuWilshire, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Photo: Johnny Depp, on horseback, carries a torch for chorus girls Christina Ricci, left, and Cate Blanchett in ``The Man Who Cried.''