TIME AND GENERATIONS PASS IN SHIFTING `HOUSE OF SAND'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

It's lovely to look at -- and the gimmick works much better than it rightfully should. But the Brazilian art film ``The House of Sand'' can't disguise a fundamental conceptual thinness, no matter how effective its distractions.

Set almost entirely on foreboding, picturesque dunes near the sea in the country's remote Maranhao province, Andrucha Waddington's film tries to say some significant things about three different generations of women -- and about being stuck.

The tricky part of the movie is its casting of Fernanda Montenegro (``Central Station'') and her real-life daughter, Fernanda Torres, as several sets of parent and child over the story's three time spans.

In the first one, beginning in 1910, Torres is Aurea, the young bride of a crazy old coot who hauls her and her mom Dona Maria (Montenegro) to the godforsaken desert, where he thinks he can establish a thriving ranch or something. The title home gets partially built, idiot hubby dies, and pregnant Aurea can't wait to hike back to civilization. But her mother is too old for the trek, so Aurea vows that, as soon as her own daughter, just plain Maria, is old enough, they'll try to leave again.

Years pass, and by the time the house is more-or-less consumed by the sand, Aurea has settled in with Massu (Seu Jorge as a young man, Luiz Melodia in middle age), a helpful fisherman from a nearby village that was founded by escaped slaves. Montenegro takes over the Aurea role when the story shifts to the 1940s, and Torres slips into Maria, who's grown into a bored, slutty and rebellious drunk. The establishment of an air force base nearby, however, offers new possibilities of escape.

Is either woman emotionally prepared for this latest, best chance, though? A short chapter three, set in 1969 and in which Montenegro pretty much plays everybody, answers that question.

Very much a cinematic study of the four basic elements, ``House'' is at its best when cinematographer Ricardo Della Rosa's cameras are marveling at the terrible beauty of windblown sand and star-splattered night skies. While both actresses effectively differentiate their characters, I can't say that Montenegro conveys a lot more than basic feelings of maturation and acceptance in her various roles.

Like other geographically aestheticized Brazilian films, ``House of Sand'' clearly aspires to be a grand cultural metaphor and a powerful, primal fable. It may well be the former. But to these Northern Hemisphere eyes, it's not so much mythic as it is a series of imposing landscapes that dwarf all efforts to define the people living in them.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE HOUSE OF SAND - Two and one half stars

(R: nudity, sex, mild violence)

Starring: Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Seu Jorge.

Director: Andrucha Waddington.

Running time: 1 hr. 55 min.

Playing: Laemmle One Colorado, Pasadena; Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Arty Brazilian film about three generations of women struggling to leave an isolated desert beach and, for the most part, failing. Probably symbolic; dramatically, mighty scrawny. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Fernanda Montenegra and Luiz Melodia portray a couple of many years in Brazil's ``The House of Sand.''