WHERE MILLENNIUM, MARRIAGE MEET.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Wedding farces are usually played for broad laughs; everything that can go wrong does go wrong on what's supposed to be a bride's perfect day, things like that.

Pupi Avati's droll, melancholy ``The Best Man'' goes for something a little more focused and compelling. While behavioral humor and surprise reversals play their parts in this handsome Italian period piece, emotional specificity and a fine sense of a lost era's attitudes are the film's most engaging qualities.

Set in a rural town on New Year's Eve 1899, the film plays most amusingly with naive hopes for the future, as represented by both a strategic, loveless marriage and optimism about the new century.

Beautiful Francesca Babini (Spanish actress Ines Sastre), the daughter of financially overextended, rustic aristocrats, is to wed this day the unappealing Edgardo (David Cantorelli), an aging playboy whose family wealth is crucial for the Babinis' survival. Though told from an early age that romantic love is just a dreamy fiction, strong-willed Francesca would prefer it to the fate she's about to be sealed into.

When Edgardo's best man Angelo (Diego Abantantuono) arrives from America at the last moment, Francesca sees her out. Not only soulfully attractive and impeccably groomed, the former local bricklayer has reportedly made a fortune across the sea. It's love at first sight, as far as she's concerned, but the sad-eyed Angelo has another agenda. He wants to find his lost first love, driving the desperate Francesca to increasingly embarrassing outbursts.

Social traditions are flipped upside down as the day turns to eve and the century runs out. Not only is Francesca behaving in ways a new bride definitely should not, but guests are getting drunker. Inevitably, class prejudices - which will certainly disappear from the Earth, as will war, in the enlightened 1900s - shed their genteel couchings. Above all, money and love drive all considerations, as they have since time began and will no matter what changes new millennia bring.

Avati, who likes to make films in Italy's northern Emilia region, where he's lived most of his life, based a lot of the events in ``The Best Man'' on stories passed down from his great-grandparents' generation. That rings true. Though ever so slightly, carefully heightened, the film's characters and events are so solidly presented and clearly delineated that they transport you into their unhappily wedded world with almost unnoticed ease.

It's some party, worth attending for the people-watching alone. There's a slightly addled, virginity-obsessed aunt; a gloriously in-denial mother of the bride; three young brothers, all priests, who are thrilled to watch the New Year's ball they dare not participate in; and many other swiftly, deftly drawn characters that shine with human veracity even as they waltz through the monkeyshines of romantic farce. Farce with an exquisitely well-constructed poker face.

The facts

The film: ``The Best Man'' (PG; sexual situations).

The stars: Diego Abatantuono, Ines Sastre, Dario Cantarelli, Valeria D'Obici.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Pupi Avati. Produced by Aurelio De Laurentiis and Antonio Avati. Released by October Films.

Running time: One hour, 40 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

Our rating: three and a half stars

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Photo

PHOTO Francesca Babini's (Ines Sastre) family needs her to marry for money in ``The Best Man.''