SAFEGUARDS SHATTERED IN `I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU NOT'.

Byline: Henry Sheehan Orange County Register

During the last couple of years, Claire Danes has risen to popularity as an embodiment of a certain kind of adolescent angst. With a face that seems designed to project trepidation and yearning in equal measure, the young actress is a walking representation of that painful moment when romantic desire, if it's ever to be expressed, must be accompanied by risky vulnerability.

That turns out to be the perfect physiological accompaniment to ``I Love You, I Love You Not,'' the story of a privileged young woman who discovers that social position and talent are no safeguards against emotional disappointment. Not satisfied with adolescent anxiety, though, the movie - directed by Billy Hopkins and adapted by Wendy Kesselman from her own play - tries to lasso in some larger issues related to the Holocaust with definitely mixed results.

Danes plays Daisy, a bright if somewhat overprotected upper-middle-class Jewish girl attending an exclusive, largely Protestant private school in Manhattan. Far outside the student body's inside circles, Daisy has nevertheless developed a crush on Ethan (Jude Law), a handsome athlete and the leader of his class's most exclusive clique.

A shy girl, Daisy reserves most of her confidences for her grandmother, Nana (Jeanne Moreau), a Holocaust survivor who spends most of her time tending to the overflowing garden in what appears to be a country home outside the city. While she spends most of her time reassuring Daisy about her attractiveness, the older woman also tells tales about the grief of her own adolescence, and how the greater sorrows were exaggerated, at times, by the slights of a former, non-Jewish best friend.

The idea that a young girl who was only dimly aware of larger, oncoming tragedies could be more shaken up by a mysteriously curtailed friendship is entirely credible. And that that experience might be a touchstone for a modern girl trying to understand the past rings equally true. But the movie pulls a reversal on that theme, trying to make a present-day girl's unhappinesses more understandable in the light of a Holocaust-shaded event. That comparison between the two situations, while not absolutely inappropriate, makes the movie off-balance.

``I Love You'' does a fairly good job of displaying Daisy's longing for Ethan, which turns out to be reciprocated, at least in part. But while the ups and downs leave Daisy a stronger, if wiser person, just as her Nana's own similar youthful experiences did, the contexts are so radically different that the suggestion of equivalence is jarring. Even with a suggestion of WASPy anti-Semitism, privileged contemporary New York is not Nazi Germany.

THE FACTS

The film: ``I Love You, I Love You Not'' (not rated).

The stars: Claire Danes, Jeanne Moreau and Jude Law.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Billy Hopkins. Screenplay by Wendy Kesselman, based on her own play. Produced by Joe Caracciolo Jr., John Fiedler and Mark Tarlov.

Running time: One hour, 29 minutes.

Playing: AMC Cecchi Gori Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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