MOVIE REVIEW : ‘LILY IN LOVE’ FOR THE INDULGENT

If “Lily in Love” (at the Fine Arts) seems vaguely familiar as well as decidedly antique it’s not surprising because distinguished Hungarian director Karoly Makk has drawn freely from his countryman Ferenc Molnar’s “The Guardsman” for his first English-language film. What is surprising is that nowhere does playwright Molnar receive any credit.

“The Guardsman” was one of the Lunts’ biggest hits on the stage, but it did not serve them as well as their only major film together; you can also imagine that Christopher Plummer and Maggie Smith, as delightful as they are in “Lily in Love,” would be lots more fun in a stage revival of the Molnar play than in this endearing but misfired attempt to update it for the screen. Not helping matters is the draggy pace Makk brings to the film, which was written by Frank Cucci.

Smith is a successful screenwriter-playwright married to Plummer, a self-absorbed, temperamental Broadway actor craving for Hollywood stardom. But Smith insists that her new script is all wrong for Plummer. (Conveniently, it’s to be shot in Budapest; “Lily in Love” is an Hungaro-American co-production.) She’s looking for an actor, she says, “with that lovely simplicity that some Italians have.” That’s all the incentive Plummer needs to transform himself into a blonde, blue-eyed Northern Italian to land the role.

That’s also all that’s necessary to trip up the film as well. In this post-”Tootsie” era Plummer’s disguise really must be convincing and not the mere superficial theatrical convention that it is. It’s impossible to believe that he could fool anyone, let alone his wife (who is not sure when she’s first on to him). This is a pity, for Plummer has never been better on the screen.

Like the actor he plays, Plummer is usually too “actory” for the camera except for the oiliest of villains. Playing such a performer seems to be a terrific release for him, and he’s as glorious as Fredric March was in his flamboyant yet loving takeoff on John Barrymore in “The Royal Family of Broadway.” But such theatrical carrying on also seems inevitably dated and is therefore another good reason why “Lily in Love” should have been a period piece.

As was “The Guardsman” this film is also concerned with a husband’s testing of his wife’s love. In his Italian Lothario guise Plummer (in halting English) tells Smith she writes as if she has “dipped her pen into tears”--and soon learns firsthand what a lousy husband he really has been to her. Smith is, as always, slyly delicious in the ways in which she can wrest implications from her every line. Also on hand are Adolph Green as Plummer and Smith’s friend and agent, constantly trying to maintain calm and reason, and Elke Sommer is Plummer’s glamorous, good-sport co-star of the film-within-the-film.

“Lily in Love” is nothing if not handsome, both in its Manhattan and Budapest settings. (Plummer and Smith live in a period town house of such magnificence you’d think that the only theatrical personage who could afford it would be Neil Simon.) Films with the civilized sensibility and sharp wit of “Lily in Love” (rated PG-13 for adult themes and some blunt words) are such rarities it’s too bad it can be recommended only to the indulgent.

‘LILY IN LOVE’

A New Line Cinema release of a Robert Halmi, Inc./Mafilm/Dialog Production of a Players Associates Film. Executive producers Robert Halmi, Jr., Peter Bacso. Producer Robert Halmi. Director Karoly Makk. Screenplay Frank Cucci. Associate producer Robert E. Altman. Camera John Lindley. Music Szabolcs Fenyes. Art director Tamas Vayer. Costumes Clifford Capone. Film editor Norman Gay. With Christopher Plummer, Maggie Smith, Elke Sommer, Adolph Green, Sandor Szabo, Janos Kende, Rosetta Lenoire.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes. MPAA-rated: PG-13 (some parental guidance advised, especially for pre-teens).