The Frenchwoman Who Delivered a Big ‘Baby’ to Hollywood : Movies: Her ‘Three Men and a Cradle’ was turned into you know what. Now she hopes lightning will strike twice with ‘Mama, There’s a Man in Your Bed.’

With “Mama, There’s a Man in Your Bed,” which opens the Santa Barbara International Film Festival tonight, French writer-director Coline Serreau may have another international hit on her hands. Serreau’s “Three Men and a Cradle,” remade as “Three Men and a Baby” by Disney, was such a big success--in both versions--that Disney’s Hollywood Pictures has signed her to both direct an English remake of “Mama” and then to write and direct a sequel.

It’s no wonder that Disney came calling. “Three Men” and “Mama” are both big-laugh comedies with universal themes. But you don’t need to wait for the American version; in both cases, Serreau got it right the first time.

“Mama” is an offbeat romantic comedy about the relationship between Romuald, a harried Paris yogurt mogul (Daniel Auteuil), and Juliette, the black cleaning lady (Firmine Richard) who helps him trap the traitors in his midst.

The 42-year-old Serreau said the idea for “Mama,” which bears the title “Romuald et Juliette” in Europe, came to her while she was in California preparing “Three Men and a Baby.”

“It’s more of an American film than a French film, really,” Serreau said, during a recent interview at a Venice cafe. “Black culture is not as important in France as it is in America. Yet, the relationship between the races here is so complex, so much a love/hate thing. Ask a Middle American his favorite TV show and he’ll say ‘Bill Cosby.’ And who’s the biggest star? Eddie Murphy. It’s crazy!

“I wrote the first 10 lines for ‘Romuald and Juliette’ here and the rest in France. I was working on another movie, but I became obsessed with ‘Romuald and Juliette’ and asked my producers if we could do it instead. I was lucky; they agreed. I don’t know how Disney got hold of the script, but they wanted to buy it. It’s still a mystery to me how they got the script!”

The working title for the Disney remake is “Randall and Juliet.” Richard Dreyfuss will play Randall, Juliet is yet to be cast. It will mark Serreau’s American directorial debut.

“I was supposed to direct ‘Three Men and a Baby,’ ” she said, “but I got sick and had to go back to Paris only three or four weeks before we were to start shooting, so I couldn’t do it.” (Serreau is not involved in the sequel, “Three Men and a Little Lady,” but she admits with a certain satisfaction that she has a share of its profits.)

Serreau brings to film making an extraordinarily rich and varied background.

“My mother was a writer, a novelist, essayist and playwright. My father was an avant-garde director who presented Brecht, Ionescu and Beckett--he introduced ‘Waiting for Godot’ and Beckett was a family friend. So I was kind of born in the theater, but by the time I was a teen-ager I had had enough of it.

“I was a pianist and organist for awhile, but I was eventually pulled back to the theater. I acted a lot, I wrote, and when the wonderful Fratollini Circus opened a school I went there the first day. I learned to work on the trapeze. I may not be gifted at other things, but I am very good at that! As an actress, I was always concerned with the physical aspects.

“At 13, I started writing and wrote all the time. It was never ‘Today, I decide to be a writer.’ I wrote two successful plays, one a success in Paris, the other in Geneva. I never thought that what I wrote should be directed by anyone but me! I like to tell stories. Writing is like an instinct with me. It’s not calculated; people should stop writing if they have to work hard at it. They should stay away, it’s no good for them. The one thing that makes great movies is a great script.”

It was just 10 years ago that Serreau’s first film, a menage a trois comedy starring Sami Frey called “Why Not?,” opened in Los Angeles. It showed more promise than fulfillment, but it did display a quirky, fresh sensibility and it did try to validate unconventional relationships in a crazy world.

Serreau says Charlie Chaplin is her idol.

“There are not many directors whose work I like,” she says, “and he is the only one I really, really admire. His films are beautiful--they are always telling us so many things about life. Like Shakespeare and Moliere, he was an actor . The really great directors were actors, they know how to deal with an audience. What I like here in America is that it is normal for an actor to be physical--it doesn’t all come out of the brain. The purely cerebral is often just so much masturbation.

“I want to do a silent film, I’m fed up with words,” she said, adamantly. “I already have the script, I’ve been working on it for 10 years. Maybe it’s the last movie I’ll ever make, I don’t know.”

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