Directed by: Claude Lelouch

Starring: Dominique Pinon, Fanny Ardant, Audrey Dana

Rated: R (for brief adult language, brief sexual references)

Running time: 103 minutes Best suited for: suspense fans

Least suited for: those in favor of domestic brands only

Roman de gare. The phrase loosely translates as "beach reading." Or, if you regularly holiday in the South of France, it's more literally "on the train reading." Passing the time reading. Pulp fiction.

Claude Lelouch's "Roman de Gare" is aptly named; it's a loose, breezy pulp thriller that pretends to be what it's not and fools you (with a couple of cheats) into believing it's not what it is. Sometimes, in cinema, that's a good thing. Sometimes it's not. In this case, it works nicely.

Yes, I was fooled now and then. No, I don't care how. Why? Because I was hooked immediately by director Lelouch's rich character study.

Okay, I'm not one of those guys that goes gaga over anything French. Well, certain things French perhaps, but not bad cinema. So suffice it to say, for those of us who don't mind subtitles, "Roman de Gare"is anything but bad cinema. It's one of those nicely twistyturny, occasionally humorous suspense yarns that grabs you and holds on tight.

Judith Ralitzer (Fanny Ardant) is a successful novelist who's secretly using a shy ghostwriter, Pierre (Dominique Pinon), to stay famous. Pierre's tired of being in Ralitzer's shadow, but the novelist would rather kill the poor guy than share the fame.

Meanwhile, uptight Parisian hairdresser Huguette (Audrey Dana) has been dumped on the roadside by her new fiance. (The French, you know, are a passionate people.) She accepts a ride with a stranger, unaware that an escaped serial killer is on the loose. The serial killer is known for performing simple magic tricks to pass the time before he strikes. The man driving Huguette shows her a few card tricks.

Because Huguette's desperate to prove to her parents that she's happy, she talks the stranger into posing as her fiance for the evening.

In Paris, somebody's brother disappears, as does a husband. Aboard a luxurious yacht in the Mediterranean, somebody falls overboard. Or were they pushed? Hmmm . . . what's going on?

Such deliberate fabrication is both intriguing and thoughtprovoking. Pinon (and whoever's seen the quirky "Amelie" or the deliciously apocalyptic "Delicatessen" will know the actor well) is a sort of continental everyman, a French Tom Hanks who can appear meek or threatening with the twitch of an eyebrow. In "Roman de Gare" he twitches his eyebrows and tends to tell tales. Which ones are true?

For a very long time, one's not even sure if "Roman de Gare" is ultimately a comedy or a tragedy. How's that for suspense?

If you follow French cinema, you may be aware that director Lelouch, who won an Oscar for 1966's "Un Homme et une Femme" ("A Man and a Woman"), is one of those directors everyone loves to talk about. He's had his share of flops, even a film he refused to release publicly. He dislikes critics and, in France, many filmgoers find him intolerable.