TALENTS BEHIND 'SUN' PAINT A LUSH PORTRAIT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

The fine Brazilian director Walter Salles (``Central Station'') enhances his mastery of imagery with ``Behind the Sun.''

Along with that, though, he exhibits a reliance on symbolism that ultimate undercuts the seething human emotions in this classic study of revenge, honor and escape.

It's easy, however, to forgive Salles and his cinematographer Walter Carvalho their indulgences. Any team that can come up with the intoxicating beauty and imaginative staging these guys bring to each and every scene has earned the right to explore new ways to present cinematic cliches. And explore them they do; while a lot of what you see in the movie will have a familiar ring, you've never seen it look quite like this before.

Based on an Albanian novel but set in the harsh, arid Brazilian interior around 1910, ``Behind the Sun'' wrings fresh, aesthetic resonance out of such overworked themes as family feuds, precocious kids and the liberating possibilities of traveling carnivals.

The Breves family works an impossibly inhospitable plot of scrubland, breaking their backs refining sugar on an old-fashioned, oxen-powered press. The cattle ranching Ferreiras, their neighbors - and we're talking some miles of badlands away here - are a little bit more advanced, and therefore prosperous. But overbearing Pa Breves (Jose Dumont) is convinced the rival clan's success comes from stealing land, something the two families have evidently been doing to one another for generations.

That, and killing each other's young men. The eldest of the Breves boys was the last gunned down, so now it is the duty of the middle child, Tonho (the remarkably good-looking Rodrigo Santoro), to take out the Ferreira responsible. He does, in a breathtakingly kinetic chase sequence through a thicket of twisted mesquite, and thereby earns himself the next bull's-eye.

This is all related through the sensibilities of Tonho's preteen brother (the winning Ravi Ramos Lacerda), a kid who doesn't even have a name until the female half of a wandering acrobatic act dubs him Pacu. She gives him a storybook about mermaids that the illiterate boy can't read, but it nonetheless fires his imagination. When Tonho catches the lovely Clara's (Flavia Marco Antonio) act in town, his imagination starts working overtime, too.

The issue becomes whether or not Tonho virtually runs off with the circus or, out of devotion to family honor, stays to work the dying plantation and face a quick, dirty death himself. Things don't work out quite as predictably as expected ... but neither tragedy nor triumph can be said to win this fateful hand.

From the Caravaggio lighting of the intimate scenes to a dizzyingly extended, high-wire rope twirl between the entrapping Earth and the expansive promise of heaven, Salles and Carvalho turn every moment of ``Behind the Sun'' into a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Whether or not the story grabs you, the sheer sensuousness of the film is worth the price of a ticket several times over.

``BEHIND THE SUN''

(Rated PG-13: violence, sex, nudity, language, children in jeopardy)

The stars: Ravi Ramos Lacerda, Rodrigo Santoro, Jose Dumont, Rita Assemany, Flavia Marco Antonio, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Walter Salles. Written by Salles, Karim Ainouz and Sergio Machado, based on Ismail Kadare's novel ``Broken April.'' Produced by Arthur Cohn. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 32 minutes.

Playing: Royal, West L.A.

Our rating: Three stars

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Rodrigo Santoro must choose between a family feud and a carnival troupe in ``Behind the Sun.''