WILDLY ROMANTIC `DEJA VU' OVERCOMES ITS OWN NARCISSISM.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

Henry Jaglom's autobiographical films, with their navel-gazing introspection, require a degree of patience that many moviegoers are loath to extend. But even the most self-indulgent Jaglom films loiter in psychic territory that more mainstream explorations of well-heeled angst often overlook.

``Deja Vu,'' Jaglom's fictionalized, wildly romantic retelling of meeting and falling in love with his wife and collaborator, Victoria Foyt, can be maddeningly redundant and narcissistic. But it also raises uncomfortable questions about making compromises in life that many happily mated couples over 30 would rather not ponder. At its insidious best, the film is a seductive advertisement for continuing one's adolescent search for a romantic soul mate well into middle age and beyond and for scrapping one's long-standing domestic arrangements if that true love should happen to present itself. In a particularly diabolical stroke, it trots out Vanessa Redgrave, one of the most persuasive performers on earth, to argue passionately for living a roller-coaster life of romantic madness.

The film's lovers, who realize within minutes of meeting that they are mysteriously fated for each other, are Dana (Foyt), an American woman traveling abroad, and Sean (Stephen Dillane), an English painter she first spies while he is sitting at his easel in a picture-perfect meadow overlooking the white cliffs of Dover.

Dana is about to marry Alex (Michael Brandon), her brash longtime lover and business partner in a Los Angeles real estate venture that involves turning a Hollywood mansion into a New Age health spa. Sean has been happily married for several years to Claire (Glynis Barber), an attractive set designer for television with a disturbingly brusque manner.

Dana and Sean are instantly certain they've met before, but to quote Lorenz Hart, they ``can't remember where or when.'' Hours after Dana flees Sean's first ardent pass, Sean and Claire turn up as guests at the same London town house where Dana and Alex are visiting John (Noel Harrison) and Fern (Anna Massey), an architect and his wife. Redgrave is John's enthusiastically free-spirited sister Skelly.

``Deja Vu'' is really a contemporary version of a 1940s supernatural romance (think of ``Portrait of Jenny'' with a dash of ``Brief Encounter''), and its delectable period music helps enhance the blushing atmosphere. ``The White Cliffs of Dover,'' the wistful World War II ballad that pines for symbolic ``bluebirds'' to wing their way above the seascape, pops up mysteriously on radios all over the place. When the lovers finally consummate their mystical bond, it is after slow-dancing to the young Frank Sinatra singing ``These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).''

Portents abound. At the beginning of the movie, Dana, while visiting Tel Aviv, has a mysterious encounter in a cafe with a beautiful older woman who may or may not be a ghost and who leaves behind a beautiful ruby pin whose significance grows as the movie unfolds. The heavenly signs pile up so fast and furiously that it is clear quite early in the film that an invisible hand must be pulling the strings.

Despite its mood of obsessive self-absorption, ``Deja Vu'' casts a mild romantic spell. Foyt, an appealing actress who suggests an unchic, earthbound Jacqueline Bisset, and Dillane, a blunt, likable actor with a pleasant face, don't make the most sizzling couple ever to tangle in a love scene. But as their characters take pains to explain, their attraction is less about sex than something far more profound and indescribable.

``Deja Vu'' goes on tangents of a sort you won't find in the work of any other filmmaker. The most delightful is a throwaway bedroom scene between John and Fern in which the architect, who has an insatiable appetite for candy bars, tempts his wife with sweets. After bickering, the two fall into a voluptuous reminiscence of their childhood tastes in candy.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Deja Vu'' (not rated).

The stars: Stephen Dillane, Victoria Foyt, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Brandon, Glynis Barber, Noel Harrison, Anna Massey, Rachel Kempson.

Behind the scenes: Directed and edited by Henry Jaglom. Written by Jaglom and Victoria Foyt. Produced by John Goldstone. Released by Rainbow Film Co./Revere Entertainment.

Running time: One hour, 56 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Town Center, Encino; State, Pasadena; Laemmle's Monica, Santa Monica; Landmark's Samuel Goldwyn Pavilion Cinemas, West Los Angeles.

Our rating: Three Stars.