TOLSTOY'S TALE TOLD TEDIOUSLY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

At one point in the overstuffed but nonabsorbing new film version of ``Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina,'' Count Vronsky (Sean Bean) gazes at the object of his affection in yet another seriously furnished Russian drawing room and complains that Anna is surrounded by too much old-fashioned stuffiness.

It's one touch of irony in an otherwise tedious enterprise.

The first Western production of ``Karenina'' filmed on Russian locations, this movie is more impressed with palaces and landscapes than the people who inhabit them. Adapter-director Bernard Rose (``Immortal Beloved,'' ``Candyman'') brings Tolstoy's lengthy 19th-century novel in at under two hours, and with the usually excised Levin-Kitty relationship pretty much intact, no less. Inevitably, though, the complex social and moral textures of the story are egregiously simplified in this process. Worse, the all-important passion seems to have gone out with the page count.

What's left is the lovely French actress Sophie Marceau, done up like a walking Madame Alexander doll, looking agonized, anticipatory, tentative, torn (all, pretty much, with the same expression), in lushly appointed ballrooms and train depots. Best known for her portrayal of the bewildered English princess in ``Braveheart,'' Marceau has a pouty, Isabel Adjani-like allure, but apparently little of that older actress' ability to imbue the simplest look with roiling emotion. Marceau doesn't catch fire here until ``Karenina's'' closing recrimination scenes, and that's much too late in the game.

Bean manages to express a bit more conflict, earlier on. But you've really got to take Anna and Vronsky's destructive, adulterous passion on their word. If they, and the upper-class gossips who judge them, didn't talk about it, we'd be hard pressed to notice these two feel anything for each other.

More is expressed by the underrated English actor James Fox as Anna's older, pride-pummeled husband Karenin. As he forces Anna into a series of increasingly impossible choices, Fox poignantly brings out Karenin's pain, love and deep feeling of guilt at not being able to overcome his sense of betrayal with his impulse to forgive. When Anna finally takes off with Vronsky, forsaking her beloved child in the bargain, we get the overwhelming impression here that the right parent retained custody. His feelings, at least, are properly communicated.

As for the contrasting, fulfilling relationship between Alfred Molina's Levin and Mia Kirshner's Kitty, well, there's a good reason why the cherished, crueler Garbo film version gave these two stiffs short shrift. They'd be boring even in a lustier, more complex film interpretation.

One of Rose's ideas of texturing, by the way, is to have the aristocrats speak most of their lines in English, then occasionally slip back into Russian when they must communicate with servants. Historically accurate in its way (French was the chosen language of the prerevolution ruling class), this plays distractingly and affected in practice.

The opulent Russian locations, however, serve their purpose. This film is as beautiful as they come, but even that works against its fundamental heartbreaking purpose. When a movie resembles nothing so much as a moving painting, it's bound to be referred to as a museum piece.

A tale of life-consuming passion, first and foremost, has to have life.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina'' (PG-13; sex).

The stars: Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean, Alfred Molina, Mia Kirshner, James Fox.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Bernard Rose, based on Leo Tolstoy's novel. Produced by Bruce Davey. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: One hour, 48 minutes.

Playing:Goldwyn Pavilion, West L.A.; Broadway, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Anna (Sophia Marceau) comforts her son Seriozhe (Hamish Falconer) in ``Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.