
DATE: Saturday, May 10, 1997                TAG: 9705090072

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

FILM'S WORTHY EFFORT FALLS SHORT OF BOOK

``SMILLA'S SENSE of Snow'' suggests a good deal more mood and mysticism than it can actually deliver.

It deserves points as an all-out crusade to capture the culture clash of Peter Hoeg's 1992 much-read novel. But it is, perhaps, a book that is unfilmable.

It has a strong, aggressive role for Julia Ormond that at last suggests that she deserves the stardom that was so quickly thrust upon her when she, in rapid succession, starred in ``Legends of the Fall,'' ``First Knight'' and ``Sabrina.''

Ormond proves here not only that she can carry a film but that she is a complex and committed actress - something that was not hinted at in her more glossy Hollywood outings.

Smilla Jasperson is a half-Inuit, half-American woman attempting to adjust to life in modern Copenhagen. Her ``sense of snow'' is a reference to her origins in Greenland - a sense of reading the elements.

The book has been widely compared to the stylings of Joseph Conrad and the existentialist philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard.

It was somewhat successful in using a conventional crime story to say something more serious. The film, in turn, is only half, perhaps two-thirds, successful.

Smilla is an aggressive busy-body who takes it upon herself to investigate the case of an Inuit boy who died when he apparently jumped from the top of her apartment building. She suspects foul play. She goes after her prey with the combined dedication of Nancy Drew and Mary Worth. But the film relentlessly suggests it is saying more than it actually says.

Bille August, whose ``Pelle the Conqueror'' won an Academy Award, bathes his film with a blue-grey look of coldness. It has more snow than ``Dr. Zhivago.'' If theaters had only waited a month, they could have saved a great deal of money on air-conditioning. Show this film and customers would automatically feel cool.

Gabriel Byrne plays a mysterious character known only as the Mechanic - the supporting role that, in the present industry situation, is usually assigned a woman.

The rest of the impressive cast includes Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Loggia.

In the last reel, though, all the mystic groping we've been through turns out to be little more than yet another mad scientist who wants to do something like rule the world. The last 30 minutes almost sinks the quite intriguing film that went before it. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW

``Smilla's Sense of Snow''

Cast: Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Robert Loggia,

Vanessa Redgrave

Director: Bille August

Screenplay: Ann Biderman, based on the novel by Peter Hoeg

Music: Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson Williams

MPAA rating: R (language, nudity)

Mal's rating: **1/2