ROMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE IT'S 1962 FOR EWAN MCGREGOR AND RENEE ZELLWEGER IN THE TONGUE-IN-CHEEK 'DOWN WITH LOVE'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

'Down With Love'' is the kind of frothy piece of entertainment in which the leading man's space-age bachelor pad rates as big a cheer as the leading man himself. And the leading man in question, Ewan McGregor, is perfectly down with that.

``That's part of the beauty of it, isn't it?'' McGregor says, laughing. ``The people at the premiere broke into applause at the sight of the place. Let's face it: Apartments like that in Manhattan are not easily come by.''

Actually, apartments like that in Manhattan don't exist. In fact, Manhattan itself, as shown in the movie, doesn't exist - and never did. And that's the self-knowing, wink-wink conceit of ``Down With Love,'' a film that updates the kind of airy, make-believe bedroom farces Rock Hudson and Doris Day made together, beginning with ``Pillow Talk'' in 1959. It's an ode to a shimmering, postwar New York that lived only on Hollywood soundstages, where studio craftsmen polished the Big Apple with Technicolor sheen.

``Love'' director Peyton Reed says someone told him his movie sounds like ``Far From Heaven'' for the ``Pillow Talk'' set. ``Yeah,'' Reed shot back, ``but we don't have the laughs.'' (Wink-wink.) Both films stand as highly stylized salutes to bygone genres, although Reed's movie is content to play it for fun and avoid the serious subtext that made Todd Haynes' ``Heaven'' such a favorite with critics and a difficult pill for audiences. For Reed and screenwriters Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, it was enough to revisit and renew the movies that were billed as ``sophisticated sex comedies.''

``Which is funny,'' Ahlert says, ``since we look back at them today and don't consider them particularly sophisticated or sexy.''

But they sure were fun, which is the reason why Reed and the writers, not to mention lead actors McGregor, Renee Zellweger, David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson wanted to try their hand at making one. ``Down With Love'' is set in 1962 and plays like it's 1962, save for the fact that everything we're watching is set in quotation marks, a cavalcade of wry references to movies like ``Pillow Talk,'' ``Lover Come Back,'' ``That Touch of Mink'' and ``Sex and the Single Girl.''

Tricks of the trade

In the film, Zellweger plays spunky Barbara Novak, a Maine librarian who comes to Manhattan with a book that tells women they don't need men and, in fact, should give up dating entirely in order to pursue the satisfactions of career. Once a woman has achieved her goals in the workplace, Novak opines, she can then enjoy sex the way a man does, ``a la carte,'' with no emotional attachments.

Men, particularly McGregor's swinging journalist Catcher Block, don't appreciate Miss Novak's views. So Catcher aims to trap Barbara, much in the same way Rock Hudson hoodwinked Doris Day in ``Pillow Talk'' or Tony Curtis tricked Natalie Wood in ``Sex and the Single Girl.'' High-spirited complications spring forth, as does a song-and-dance number and a cameo appearance from Tony Randall, the man who played the lovelorn sidekick in those Hudson-Day movies, all of it delivered in glorious Cinemascope and sunbursts of color.

Says the 82-year-old Randall: ``They sent me the script, and I read it and I thought, 'Oh, this is just ``Pillow Talk.'' ' Then it was, 'Oh, I get it. This is ``Pillow Talk.'' ' I saw the joke and thought it was a pretty good one at that.''

The oh-I-get-it effect won't be lost on anyone familiar with the bedroom farces of the late '50s and early '60s, movies that appeared at a time when mainstream mores in America were loosening and a gal (usually Day, but also Wood or Gina Lollobrigida or even Sandra Dee, if you're willing to extend the genre to its nadir) would put up a fight to hold onto her virtue, not necessarily because she didn't want to have sex, but just as often because she wanted to remain in control of the situation.

``Getting to the point of having sex was the objective in these movies, as opposed to romantic comedies where it's about falling in love,'' writer Drake says. ``True love wasn't the payoff at the very end. Sex was.''

Of course, something always saved the heroine from doing the deed until she tied the knot. And while such plot complications seem kind of hokey today, the Day-Hudson movies were considered pretty sophisticated for their time, so much so that the posters occasionally warned (titillated): ``Leave the children at home for this one!''

Bang a gong, get it on

``Down With Love'' dives right into all the conventions of its predecessors in its story (the man assumes a false identity), humor (lots of extended double-entendres and over-the-top sight gags), intentionally artificial-looking locations (the movie was made entirely on soundstages), lavish costumes (Zellweger never wears the same outfit twice) and zippy use of split screens. The first line in the screenplay is: ``The film opens with a period studio logo. The movie is set in 1962 and should look like it was made in 1962.''

``Juggling all those tones was the biggest challenge,'' Reed says. ``We spent two weeks rehearsing just to get comfortable, and there was still an element of 'What are we doing here?' once we started shooting.''

Says McGregor: ``It was strange because I wasn't just playing a journalist in 1962. I was playing a movie star in 1962 who was cast as a journalist, and I had to act in this very specific '60s comedic style, a style that goes against everything I was taught as an actor. Because in that style, you play the comedy big. It's not subtle.

``Peyton would be off-camera with a gong, saying, 'Don't be afraid to make this exaggerated face, because there's going to be a gong accompanying the reaction,' '' McGregor continues. ``And then he'd hit the gong, not because he needed to, but I think just to make us feel like we weren't making fools of ourselves.''

Not that they weren't willing to do so. Both McGregor and Zellweger have shown a game willingness in the past to set aside their dignity when silliness is required, not unlike their predecessors, Hudson and Day. Randall, for one, hopes they make some more movies together.

``It's almost a novel idea today to make a film that actually entertains you,'' Randall says. ``That's why people still watch 'Pillow Talk' more than 40 years later. It's fun. I think that's all there is to it.''

Roll call

PILLOW TALK (1959)

The stars: Rock Hudson, Doris Day.

The complication: Hudson ties up party line, talking to girlfriends. Day objects.

The resolution: Hudson poses as an aw-shucks Texas rancher to win her over.

Memorable exchange: Hudson - ``Look, I don't know what's bothering you, but don't take your bedroom problems out on me.'' Day - ``I have no bedroom problems. There's nothing in my bedroom that bothers me.'' Hudson - ``Ooooh. That's too bad.''

LOVER COME BACK (1961)

The stars: Hudson, Day.

The complication: They're rival ad execs, she a do-gooder, he a playboy.

The resolution: Hudson poses as absent-minded scientist to win her over.

Memorable exchange: Day - ``I don't use sex to land an account.'' Hudson - ``When do you use it?'' Day - ``I don't!''

THAT TOUCH OF MINK (1962)

The stars: Day, Cary Grant.

The complication: Will Cinderella Day accompany Prince Charming Grant to Bermuda as his companion, but not as his wife?

The resolution: She will. But he shouldn't get the wrong idea.

Memorable line: Gal pal Audrey Meadows - ``Boy, men really have this game beat. For 2,000 years we've had their children, washed their clothes, cooked their meals, cleaned their houses. And what did they give us in return? The right to smoke in public. We sold out for cigarettes.''

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964)

The stars: Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood.

The complication: Tabloid writer wants to expose proto-feminist sex writer as a virgin.

The resolution: Unmarried Curtis poses as a man with marital troubles to get close to Wood. He falls hard; her possible virginity begins to matter less.

Memorable exchange: None that we can recall, but there is a wacky car chase on the 405 Freeway.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) NEW PILLOW TALK

`Down With Love' - with Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor - updates the language of the '60s sex comedy

(2) It's 1962, and swinging journalist Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor) is on the make ...

(3) ... with spunky author Barbara Novak (Renee Zellweger) as his target, in ``Down With Love.''

(4) Doris Day stars in ``Pillow Talk.''

Box:

Roll call (see text)