BY DANIEL BAIG | Storytelling, the new film from writer/director Todd Solondz, whose previous efforts were the infamous yet much-lauded Happiness and the highly acclaimed Welcome To The Dollhouse, is a brilliant, brilliant [yes, two brilliants], hysterically funny and yet thought-provoking comic drama.

Now here is where a lot of critics would place the following qualifier: "But it's definitely not for the easily offended," which has become quite a cliched phrase.

But I'm not going to say that. As a matter of fact, I can't stand that phrase. For one thing, it's very misleading. To wit:

I happen to be someone who is easily offended. Check out my review of 40 Days and 40 Nights for an example. As a matter of fact, I think by and large people don't get offended enough  about the right things, that is. I find it extremely offensive, for example, that the Secretary Of Defense blatantly lies at press conferences about the accidental killing and beating and torturing of Afghan allies.

The other phrase a lazy thinker and writer would use here is, "it's not for those without a sense of humor." Which frequently is used to try to demonize people who don't find racist/misogynist/anti-gay etc. jokes amusing. I like to laugh, and like to make people laugh. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor. But I don't find much of what Rush Limbaugh says, for example, to be at all humorous.

But I did find Storytelling at times absolutely hilarious.

The real warning that should be given about Storytelling is this: people who have kneejerk (i.e. reflexive) reactions to certain words and topics might be advised to stay away. Because these kind of folks often seem to have a hard time noting the context in which a word might be used, or a topic discussed.

For example, you will hear the word "nigger" in Storytelling. Now, if that alone is enough for you to decide that this movie must therefore be a bad thing  like parents who want to ban Huckleberry Finn from schools because it uses that same word, without paying any attention to Twain's irony and purpose , well, you may be beyond help.

You will hear the word "lynching" in a line that provoked howls of laughter from me  and others  in the audience. You will similarly hear a joke that might be, albeit inaccurately, described as a joke about the Holocaust.

But Storytelling is not making jokes about lynching, or the Holocaust, two things about which there is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, funny  which includes Life Is Beautiful, which truly is offensive.

Rather, it is making points about the devaluing of words like "survivor," and "victim," this devaluing being a process which does lead to offensive things.

Storytelling also examines the nature of, and the difference between, empathy and pity, and where one leaves off and the other begins.

Now that's the kind of thing you don't typically encounter in contemporary American movies. But this examination is by no means boring; on the contrary, though at times the movie can make you squirm in discomfort (not from anything visually gross, but because it's confronting you with situations laden with "hot-button" issues), it also makes you laugh. It also just may possibly move you, or at least make you feel empathy for, instead of having pity for, some of the characters.

And Storytelling doesn't provide pat answers to the questions it raises.

The film is divided into two parts. The first part, entitled "Fiction," is fairly short, about twenty minutes or so. It's set in a creative writing program at a not very prestigious college in the mid-eighties (though the period isn't readily apparent).

"Fiction"'s three leads are the very pretty Selma Blair as an undergrad, Leo Fitzpatrick  famous from Kids, and so very good in last year's Bully  as her classmate/boyfriend who has cerebral palsy, and Robert Wisdom as their creative writing instructor, an award winning black novelist (known for writing about the African-American experience) stuck at this backwater and basically all-white school, who appears to be bored out of his mind.

While Blair and Fitzpatrick are somewhat familiar faces, Wisdom has mostly been a stage actor up until now. For much of the movie I was trying to figure out who it was that he was reminding me so strongly of. Finally I hit on it; it wasn't an obvious connection because the ethnicities are different. Wisdom is astoundingly like a younger (before he got fat) Orson Welles, in appearance, manner, and dark magnetic presence. His character is silent for long stretches of time, but still he easily commands your attention.

I don't want to reveal much else about the story, except to note that there is a fairly explicit sex scene, which if you're seeing Storytelling in the U.S. you won't be seeing all of. Not because it was trimmed to appease the ratings board, but because Solondz covers up the bodies with a giant red rectangle during the "objectionable" (as determined by the ratings board) part of the scene. In Europe, there's no red rectangle.

Among the things "Fiction" is "about":

-- the sexiness of things taboo, of stereotypes, and even of suffering.

-- Can fiction be true? What role does truth have in fiction, anyway?

-- What's the point of "creative writing" and "creative writing classes"? To produce art, or as self-catharsis for the writer?

When I say the movie is about these things, though, I don't mean that the characters sit around and have conversations about them. Instead, they're subtexts percolating around under the story.

While Solondz is less of a visual stylist than he is a wickedly sharp writer, there's some very clever, and again, subtextual, ironic use of tools like juxtaposed imagery and suggestive lighting, achieved in coordination with editor Alan Oxman and director of photograph Fredrick Elmes, who's no stranger to communicating ideas, ironic and otherwise, through lighting, having been the cinematographer on David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Eraserhead as well as many other classics like The Ice Storm and River's Edge (not to mention Valley Girl !).

This sort of thing can be tricky, though. Freed of context, the way in which Wisdom and Blair are lit at one point as they walk side by side late one evening, the young girl almost literally glowing with whiteness, while her silent professor seems to actually be absorbing the darkness around him so that he's practically a corporeal manifestation of the night, could definitely be viewed as inflammatory and, yes, offensive. The size discrepancy between the two actors is also clearly no accident.

Similarly, the appearance of a USA For Africa T-shirt right after one character accuses another of only being interested in him because of pity is not the most innocuous of cuts.

The very first sequence of shots which starts the movie is designed to make viewers question our understanding of what is exploitative. The sudden shift from titillation to discomfort we feel is exactly the point.

"Fiction" could stand on its own as one of the best short films ever made. Its final line of dialogue, delivered by Robert Wisdom, is, no hyperbole, perfect. This is brilliant, brilliant writing by Solondz.

The only objection I can make about "Fiction" is to the casting of Fitzpatrick. There's no question that he's very good in the part, but I can't help but think that utilizing an actor who really has cerebral palsy would have been a better choice, for a number of reasons. (And not because I think that only someone with the actual affliction could, or "should," portray someone with it.) The main reason is that, having seen Fitzpatrick in other parts (and recently as well), I was very aware he was only pretending to have the disease, and so at times found myself thinking about the technical aspects of his performance ("Is that really what it'd be like?") instead of focusing on the story.

The second and longer part of Storytelling is entitled, not surprisingly, "Non-Fiction." It, too, is great, though it differs in tone from "Fiction." It's much broader, and more obviously deliberately comic; it's much more in the spirit of the very black comedy of Happiness, especially that film's Camryn Manheim story thread.

Its adult stars are John Goodman, playing a very different type of father than he did in Roseanne, Julie Hagerty (of Airplane!), Paul Giamatti (Pig Vomit in Private Parts), Lupe Ontiveros, the National Board of Review winner for Best Supporting Actress two years ago for her performance in Chuck and Buck, and Franka Potente, who was Lola in Run, Lola, Run.

Giamatti plays an aspiring documentary filmmaker who decides to document the life of a high school senior, played memorably by Mark Webber, who appears to be a slacker extraordinaire. Goodman and Hagerty are his rather uptight parents, and Ontiveros plays the family's Guatemalan maid  which sounds like a stereotype/clichi if ever there was one; remember, though, the example of Jacobean dramas ('Tis Pity She's A Whore, for example), in which servants are often dark instruments of vengeance.

Though all the actors are very good, two steal the show: Goodman, and Jonathan Osser, who assays the part of the family's youngest son. Osser, who was only eleven at the time, gives a phenomenal performance in a very critical role  in many ways, his character is the villain of the piece.

As I mentioned, "Non Fiction" is rather broad in tone. This allows Solondz to do things like have the middle son (Noah Fleiss), the football jock who's dating a cheerleader, be the only blond in the family, and always be accompanied when he's with his girlfriend by their own song, the remarkably insipid "Gonna Have Fun."

Belle and Sebastian provide some good songs for the film as well, though.

Two other things worthy of mentioning: Storytelling has really good opening credits, and a great poster.

At the risk of sounding like Joel Siegel, I'll go ahead and say what happens to be true: This is the first great film of 2002. Go see it.

(That being said, if you saw and hated Happiness, you're not going to like Storytelling either.)

Grade: A