PAINTER'S STILL LIFES BECOME STUNNING MOVING PICTURES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

As he himself has grown into one of Spain's most notable artists over the past 40 years, director Carlos Saura has become increasingly devoted to capturing signature expressions of his culture on screen. This has resulted in a scintillating series of dance- and opera-based films, ``Carmen,'' ``El Amor Brujo'' and ``Flamenco'' among them.

Now, after many years of gestation and development, Saura and his virtuoso design team (cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and art director Pierre-Louis Thevenet) have tackled the subject of Francisco de Goya, whom the filmmaker considers Spain's greatest painter. ``Goya in Bordeaux'' is as achingly gorgeous a tribute as one visual genius can make to another. Subjective, experimental and stubbornly dreamlike, the film, like most which attempt such a thing, doesn't quite convincingly reveal all that goes into the creative process. But it certainly makes enough great art of its own to compensate for any expository shortcomings.

As the title indicates, the film places emphasis on the artist's final years as an exile in France in the 1820s. But time, much like other standard measurements of reality, is a relatively ignored concept in this movie.

The aged Goya, played with a stirring mixture of decrepitude and brio by Francisco Rabal, shares almost equal screentime with Jose Coronado as his younger self. Sometimes in delirium, other times in reverie, and often just in answering the questions of his young daughter Rosario (Dafne Fernandez), Goya recounts - more accurately, relives - the key moments in his professional and personal life. And for so complete an artist, the distinction between the two is as fluid as the styles of his paintings and this film.

Along with many aspects of Goya's working methods, we learn of his early ambition to become portraitist to the Spanish Court, his passion for the seductive, assassinated Duchess of Alba (Maribel Verdu), his disillusionment with his country's social backwardness while the Enlightenment was in full swing across the border, and his even more devastating realization that those enlightened French who came a-calling behind Napoleon's bayonets were capable of the worst atrocities.

We also experience his midlife aesthetic maturation, when Goya lost his hearing and discovered his distinctive and influential ability to substitute color for line.

Another border decimated, and Saura's visual style, a stately swirl of disappearing walls, translucent panels within frames and shifting light filters, breathtakingly evokes the master's approach. And of course, the piece de resistance, a moving stage tableau vivifying the famous ``Disasters of War'' etchings, qualifies as the richest cinematic experience of the year.

``GOYA IN BORDEAUX''

(R; violence, nudity, sex).

The stars: Francisco Rabal, Jose Coronado, Dafne Fernandez, Maribel Verdu. Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Carlos Saura. Produced by Andres Vincent Gomez. Released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: One hour, 34 minutes. Playing: Royal, West L.A.; Colorado, Pasadena. Our rating: Three and one half stars.

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Francisco Rabal stars as Spain's notorious artist Francisco de Goya in the aesthetically pleasing ``Goya in Bordeaux.''