
DATE: Sunday, May 25, 1997                  TAG: 9705240057

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   71 lines

REFRESHING MOVIE PROVIDES SOME SUBSTANCE

``THE SUBSTANCE of Fire'' is the latest in a series of off-beat and character-driven films that has made Lynnhaven Mall's movie complex a place to check out.

This theater has a knack for sneaking in unexpectedly challenging movies with no advance notice and no advertising. If patrons ever discover its films are there, it could become a much-needed center for art films in Virginia Beach. But Lynnhaven Mall's management seems to actually want to hide its specialty films.

As for ``The Substance of Fire,'' the film version of Jon Robin Baitz's Off-Broadway play about a family in turmoil: It's no gem, but it stands in marked contrast to all the explosions on other screens. The explosions here are within the ranks of a family falling apart.

Ron Rifkin, repeating a stage role that was written for him, plays a tyrannical Jewish father who treats his three adult children as if they were morons. They are not.

Aaron (well played by Tony Goldwyn) is pushy and aggressive as the son who works with his father in a publishing firm. Martin (played with customary vulnerability by Timothy Hutton) is the more decent son - suffering from Hodgkin's disease and possibly set for death.

The daughter, Sarah (with Sarah Jessica Parker repeating her stage role) is something of a wacky bimbo. She's an actress for a children's TV show. Lacking any real attention from her father, she keeps falling for older men - substitute father figures.

The father, a book publisher, is from the Old World. His memories of the Holocaust, and his guilt about being a survivor, apparently fuel his bitter and tyrannical nature.

As played by Rifkin, he's a bit tough to take for the duration of a movie, much less the lifetime his family faces with him.

Still, he makes an admirable case for rising above mediocrity. He refuses to publish a sensational novel called ``Rising Tide,'' which son Aaron has found. Instead, he insists upon publishing an expensive four-volume history of Nazi medical experiments. The father is bitter and tiresome but you have to give it to him: He sticks by his values.

Tired of being hounded and belittled, the three children finally gang up on him to take over the publishing company, which subsequently publishes the ``slicko hipster'' novel and makes lots of money. Meanwhile, the estranged father goes bankrupt and faces the possibility of having to sell his beloved collection of prized books.

The finale is so vague, and pointless, that it ends this rather wandering film with a wimper rather than a bang.

Rifkin is quite good as the bitter father, so good that he becomes an irritant. Even though his children may be a bunch of irresponsible louts, we tend to side with them. But not too much: The film itself becomes an irritant because it's difficult to find a character we like.

Parker again etches one of those modern child-women that she plays so well. Hutton is adequate, but he's never found another role to match his Oscar-winning promise in ``Ordinary People.'' Goldwyn is quite good as Aaron.

There is smoke but there's no real spark to ``The Substance of Fire.'' It is strictly for film-goers who are turned off by the mindlessness of most current movies and who like character-driven puzzles. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

``The Substance of Fire''

Cast: Ron Rifkin, Timothy Hutton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tony

Goldwyn, Lee Grant, Eric Bogosian, Ronny Graham

Director: Daniel Sullivan

Screenplay: Jon Robin Baitz, based on his own play

MPAA rating: R (some language)

Mal's rating: Two 1/2 stars

Location: Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach