OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS YIELD SHARP INSIGHTS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Todd Solondz, the evil dweeb genius of sensationalism-and-sadism cinema (``Welcome to the Dollhouse,'' ``Happiness''), takes on his critics - and, rather boldly, himself - with his latest exercise in calculated offensiveness, ``Storytelling.''

It's a two-part film that, in both sections, works overtime to shatter every politically correct taboo the director can think of. But each panel - a short, pungent opening comedy called ``Fiction'' and a more rambling but equally scabrous follow-up, ``Non-Fiction'' - is a withering auto-critique of a writer or director's responsibility toward the truth of his subject. In the end, Solondz may have thrown a cruelly hilarious tantrum at the people who think he's just a nasty, nasty man, but in the process he acknowledges that anyone who dares to tell a story better know precisely what they think they're doing.

A concise concentration of utterly uncalled-for chuckles, ``Fiction'' charts the erotic misadventures of college writing major Vi (Selma Blair). We first encounter her making vigorous yet oddly detached love with classmate Marcus (``Kids' '' Leo Fitzpatrick), who has cerebral palsy and remarks that he's noticed her ``pleasure isn't there anymore, the kinkiness is gone.''

While Vi strongly denies this, she breaks up with Marcus the next day after their Pulitzer Prize-winning writing teacher Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom) eviscerates an autobiographical story Marcus reads to the class. That night Vi lets the professor, an African-American whose contempt for his privileged white students all but radiates from every pore, pick her up for some degrading, racial-epithet charged sex. Solondz refused to cut this sequence for an R rating; instead, he imposes a red bar that just screams ``This is censorship!'' over the offending action.

The next day, Vi reads a story to the class based on her interpretation of the experience. In lockstep, the other kids accuse her of the vilest racist fantasizing, but Mr. Scott says it's the best thing she's ever written.

``Non-Fiction'' charts the efforts of woebegone Solondz look-alike Toby Oxman (Paul Giamatti) to make a documentary about how tough it is to be a suburban high-school kid these days. The formless shoe store employee's formless concept somehow intrigues an upper-middle-class New Jersey family, the Livingstons, who allow Toby full access to their unexamined dysfunctionality.

Oldest son Scooby (Mark Webber) is a stoner who doesn't want to go to college but is sure he has a bright future as a TV talk-show host. Youngest child Mikey (Jonathan Osser) is a cherubic sociopath who loves subtly tormenting the family's overworked housekeeper Consuelo (Lupe Ontiveros). Patriarch Marty (John Goodman) is always in a rage even as he insists he's living the good life, while his wife, Fern (Julie Hagerty), seems one medication away from a nervous breakdown.

As Toby films the Livingstons' chronic brushes with idiocy and occasional encounters with tragedy, he loses control of the documentary he didn't know how to make in the first place; the supposedly serious, sympathetic portrait becomes a laugh riot for the hip cineaste crowd. Whatever Solondz may be saying about himself in this sequence, he misses no opportunity to also skewer the consensus defenseless, whether they be working poor, Holocaust survivors, self-dramatizing teen-agers or anyone else who, in the filmmaker's jaundiced eyes, dares to claim victimhood.

But he also manages to work in the best lampoon of ``American Beauty'' ever, so the guy can't be all bad. Can he?

Todd Solondz: The world doesn't need him around, but as long as he's here we may as well have some laughs.

``STORYTELLING''

(Rated R: sex, nudity, language, violence, drug use, racism, children in jeopardy)

The stars: Selma Blair, Robert Wisdom, Leo Fitzpatrick, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Mark Webber, Julie Hagerty, Lupe Ontiveros, Jonathan Osser.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Todd Solondz. Produced by Ted Hope and Christine Vachon. Released by Fine Line Features.

Running time: One hour, 23 minutes.

Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood; NuWilshire, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three stars