OLDMAN'S SOUTH LONDON VISION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Brave, true and quite an effort to sit through, ``Nil by Mouth'' may be the grimmest slice of lower-class British life filmed in this decade. And that's really grim.

Written and directed by the fine actor Gary Oldman, extrapolated from memories of his own distressed childhood in South London, ``Mouth'' is both an impressive piece of intimate character observation and what must have been a harrowing act of personal purging. It's the kind of thing only a powerful need would compel one to revisit, let alone restage.

So what we have here is a movie that's much more impressive than it is enjoyable. There's compound frustration for American audiences built into the piece as well, since half of the dialogue is in cockney so thick it's unintelligible to Yank ears. Considering the free-ranging distemper of what we can understand, though, that's something of a blessing in disguise.

Things start off congenially enough at a grungy but convivial comedy club where everyone seems to be having a good time. We soon realize, however, that the key women of the piece, a frumpy housewife named Valerie (Kathy Burke, who won the Cannes Film Festival's best actress award for her performance) and her energetic mum Janet (Laila Morse, a talented newcomer to acting), sit at one table while Valerie's fireplug of a husband Ray (Ray Winstone) shares dirty stories with his mates elsewhere.

A long sequence at the unemployed couple's dreary flat reinforces the notion that Ray prefers the company of his semi-criminal buddies to his wife's. The fact that her junkie brother Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles) steals whenever he visits adds more strain to the shaky marriage. Janet and Billy have a much more admirable relationship, though, if you consider the coddling co-dependency of a mother driving her addict son to score healthy.

Actually, as alcoholic Ray's delusional jealousy grows violent, Billy starts looking like a decent sort by comparison. But once the battered Valerie finally gets up the gumption to leave him, we discover that the horrible Ray is a touching victim, too, of an inherited inability to express affection (the title refers to a medical instruction, but to Ray it's an epitaph for the father who never said I love you).

On paper this all sounds simperingly pop-psychy. On screen, it could not be more viscerally punishing. Oldman focuses on moment-to-moment impulses and deeply felt, if barely understood drives. The one uplifting aspect of the whole depressing thing - and it does boast something resembling a happy ending - is Oldman's unerring determination to draw moments of human dignity out of lives on the edge of pure, animal wallow.

Still, if anyone could ever have used a full monty, it's the dunderheaded blokes of ``Nil by Mouth.''

THE FACTS

The film: ``Nil by Mouth'' (R; violence, language, drug use, nudity).

The stars: Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Charlie Creed-Miles, Laila Morse, Edna Dore and Jamie Forman.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Gary Oldman. Produced by Oldman, Luc Besson and Douglas Urbanski. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: Two hours, eight minutes.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Charlie Creed-Miles, left, Jamie Forman and Ray Winstone star in ``Nil by Mouth,'' written, directed and co-produced by Gary Oldman.