OVERLY THIN IS IN FOR 'PRIMO AMORE'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

STARVATION DIETS are undoubtedly horrific anywhere. But it seems especially cruel to bully someone you supposedly love into fasting away when you live in Italy.

Matteo Garrone's ``Primo Amore (First Love)'' acknowledges the extra torture - and absurdity - of undue weight consciousness in a land long celebrated for the voluptuousness of its food as well as its people. But there is much more to the movie than tsk-tsking and a few nervous laughs. Based on a true incident, ``Primo Amore'' tunnels deeply enough into its characters' psyches to reach classic tragedy levels. This could not be further from the dysfunction-of-the-week TV movie its subject matter would suggest.

Vittorio (Vitaliano Trevisan), who runs a small goldsmithing business he inherited from his father, meets Sonia (Michela Cescon) through a classified ad. She's no raving beauty but is perky, pleasant and fit. He lets her know right away that he was expecting someone, well, thinner, to both her (and the audience's) utter amazement.

That should be that, and Sonia is more than happy to get on the next bus away from this freak. But since he's always had trouble finding someone who matched his exacting physical ideal, Vittorio decides to follow his analyst's advice and seeks a second chance with Sonia.

Love blooms. Really. It seems as if all Vittorio actually had to overcome was commitment phobia. But when the happy couple move into a unique house in the country, love starts to mean never having to say you're hungry.

Vittorio becomes as fixated on Sonia reaching an unnecessarily low weight as he is about the gold figurines he devotes more and more of his company's resources to making, even though they're too - yes - lightweight to have any commercial value. Sonia tries to please Vittorio, but that just results in a mad, mutual downward spiral of misplaced trust and aesthetic perversion. Yet she doesn't exactly come off as an unwilling victim, and his controlling compulsion proves at least as pathetic as it is sadistic.

Like I said, it's true love.

Cescon is a remarkably brave actress who literally tells much of Sonia's story with her body (and no, she didn't pull a ``Machinist,'' thank God; though a bone or two does protrude toward the end, we're led to believe that the drama plays out primarily in these people's heads, not on their scales).

Trevisan is courageous in a very different way. He makes Vittorio as unemphatic as he is implacable, a quiet monster who has forged his own reasonable nature into a terrible, two-edged sword. You can't help but hate the guy, yet it's uncomfortably easy to always understand the emotional abyss he's operating from.

You wish ``Primo Amore'' wouldn't make that so easy to swallow. But it's because of Garrone and the actors' brilliance that we have to ... and, reluctant as we might be to admit it to ourselves, we like it.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

PRIMO AMORE - Three and one half stars

(Not rated: nudity, sex, language, violence)

Starring: Vitaliano Trevisan, Michela Cescon.

Director: Matteo Garrone.

Running time: 1 hr. 34 min.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

In a nutshell: Incisive, disturbing psychological study of a man obsessed with his girlfriend's weight, among other issues. In Italian with English subtitles.