TIGERS BURNING BRIGHT STARS OF A DIFFERENT STRIPE BRING EMOTIONAL WEIGHT TO 'TWO BROTHERS'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

Eight months of exotic locales, occasionally brutal weather and 30 tigers upon whose broad-striped backs the fate of your film utterly depends.

No problem, says ``Two Brothers'' director and co-screenwriter Jean- Jacques Annaud.

``The surprise was that it was easier than I anticipated to get it right,'' Annaud says of his family-themed tiger saga, which opens Friday. ``The tigers were so charismatic, and they ended up doing more or less what was intended.''

This would be the same Jean-Jacques Annaud who, in his 1988 film ``The Bear'' kept an audience absolutely riveted for long stretches of film time while watching the wordless interaction between young and adult Kodiak bears.

Tigers, says Annaud, are far more expressive.

``You can read it on their faces in half a second,'' says the white-haired director, ``If he's angry, you read it. If he's in a seductive mood, you read it as well.''

``And it's exciting, too, because their moods change so rapidly,'' adds Guy Pearce, one of the few token human beings in ``Two Brothers.'' ``They can be very curious and suddenly become scared, then they'll forget that and go back to being curious. Someone said to me something about manipulating their behavior. I said, 'No, we're manipulating the situation to get them to react, but their behavior is completely natural. Completely.' ''

Those big, majestic creatures have a fascination that Annaud's camera easily captures. And when you throw saucer-eyed tiger cubs into the mix, the love affair deepens.

``Two Brothers'' follows tiger siblings Kumal and Sangha as they become separated from their parents in the jungles of Southeast Asia, grow up separately and nearly end up fighting each other in an arena battle.

A total of 30 tigers play Kumal and Sangha as cubs and adults as well as their parents. Human actors routinely handled the cubs but were never actually filmed in scenes with adult tigers, according to producer Jake Eberts. Those scenes were accomplished through ``pass shots'' and editing, but not - Annaud proudly proclaims - through the use of any CGI animals. Thierry Le Portier (who worked with Annaud on ``The Bear'') and Randy Miller are the trainers - animal acting coaches, if you like.

Even though they are members of a species not generally known for learning behaviors (``I've never been able to train my (house) cat to do anything,'' says Pearce), the animals can be taught. The ``training'' mostly consisted of getting the tigers to perform behaviors they would do in the wild. The ``performances'' you see, therefore, consist of natural tiger behavior.

``Tigers are, in a way, between dogs and cats,'' says Annaud. ``They're very expressive and intelligent like dogs, and they understand much more. Say you want them to come someplace. So it's 'mark, mark, come, come.' They come, and then you send them back to point one. When they come back, this is the time when they can play. For the acting proper, we would have to invent something to make them react.''

That invention could be anything from giving a cub a full bottle of milk before a sleepy-time scene to uncovering a black cloth, revealing a puppet and filming the tiger's reaction. To get a pair of adult tigers to frolic and play together, the filmmakers kept a pair of tiger brothers apart from each other for 10 days. Then they put them back together and filmed the joyous reunion.

By now, Annaud and his animal team are practiced hands at animal reactions. To anger a wolf for a key scene in his ``Quest for Fire,'' Annaud had the trainers show the animal a large piece of meat and then filmed the reaction after they fed that morsel to a nearby dog.

Not that the tigers didn't also have a touch of the showman in them. Producer Eberts insists that at least one tiger proved to be a bit of a perfectionist.

``He was unhappy with his technique and wanted to come back and do it again,'' says Eberts. ``We'd get him to go back to his trainer and set up, and he'd go back to his mark and want to do it again. It was completely fascinating.''

An independent producer of films that frequently have an environmental message or component, Eberts signed on to ``Two Brothers'' ``for three reasons: Jean ... Jacques ... Annaud.''

``I had been fascinated by tigers, and I had never actually seen one in the wild,'' says Eberts, who had produced Annaud's 1986 feature ``The Name of the Rose.'' ``This guy (Annaud) tends to do the kind of movie that takes you to exotic places and gives you stories, people and ideas that are, in a way, a little old-fashioned. It just suits me.''

Pearce (``L.A. Confidential,'' ``Memento'') plays Aidan McRory, a big- game hunter-turned-tiger-booster who befriends the cub Kumal. His role is decidedly second billing to the members of the animal kingdom, and Pearce doesn't mind a bit.

``From my point of view, I'm always more interested in what's going on back there, what's that person doing back there that's having an effect on this rather than what's happening up front,'' says Pearce. ``For me, it almost solidifies our presence.''

``The first time I met with Guy, I was very touched,'' adds Annaud. ``He had a wonderful humility that is part of his generosity. He said, 'It's so wonderful to know that the leads are going to be the animals and I'm going to be behind.' And that's unusual, for a prestigious, important actor to have this humility.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- cover -- color) STARS in STRIPES

The cool cats of `Two Brothers' played their parts to purr-fection

(2 -- 3) Guy Pearce, above, doesn't mind playing second banana to Kumal and the rest of the big cats in ``Two Brothers.'' ``Tigers are, in a way, between dogs and cats,'' says director Jean-Jacques Annaud, right. ``They're very expressive and intelligent like dogs, and they understand much more.