TWO NEW FILMS FRUSTRATINGLY OFF MARK : It’s a Case of Murder as Fonda Plays an Alcoholic Actress in Lumet’s ‘The Morning After’

“The Morning After” (citywide) begins with a rude awakening--light flooding a huge, pristine loft, an interview playing on the TV, a bed with two strangers--one of them dead.

It’s an icy vision of post-’70s hedonism gone amok: A terrified woman lies next to a corpse, his chest skewered, blood matting the expensive sheets. On the television, the image of that same man (in a pre-taped show) discusses, with a mild smirk, his activities as soft-core porno muscle-magazine publisher. In the chill, clear air, as the TV prattles away, casual sex and sudden death lie in a sodden red embrace.

From that shot, the film has you in its grip. But it’s a grip that relies more on intimate psychology than Grand Guignol . Perhaps that’s because human drama is the strong suit of director Sidney Lumet and his leading actors (Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges and Raul Julia). But it’s also because the actors have to take over, because the story doesn’t deepen or extend itself enough.

It’s not the usual Xeroxed, pseudo-Hitchcock thriller, full of chases and gore, but it lacks the right kind of embellishment. You’re left with a frustrating sense that the film is an interesting spine, on which--unlike the pornographer’s bed--the body has not yet materialized.

As with any Lumet-directed work, it’s an actors’ show. Jane Fonda plays the woman of the Gothic awakening, over-the-hill starlet Alex Sternbergen, an alcoholic with bleached, teased hair, a woman on the edge who’s just been pushed over. (Alex becomes that classic noir icon, the seemingly wrongly accused killer on the run--from the cops, the killers and her own mental blackouts.)

Julia plays Jacky, her estranged hairdresser-husband, one of her few sources of help, but distanced by his casual attitude and his new life with a wealthy fiancee. Bridges is Kendall, a stranger who rescues her at an airport and begins sticking burr-like to her fugitive flanks. And, like Jacky, he is an equivocal character whose motives keep you guessing; a cheerful-seeming bigot, an ex-cop who remarks with sunny ominousness that he’s now a repairman, fixing what people leave.

These three all give richly detailed, full-bodied performances. Individually and as a team they’re brilliant (frustratingly brilliant--you want them to go further).

Playing a terror-stricken alcoholic, Fonda pushes herself to the limit. Like “Klute’s” Bree (“a spooky broad”) and Gloria in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Alex combines cocky pseudo-toughness and quivering vulnerability. Playing her, Fonda can be abrasive, jut-chinned neurotic, sexy, impetuous; she can go on volcanic emotional benders. She puts an almost deranged, off-center terror into this character, and she’s terrific at delineating Alex’s mercurial mood swings. The movie may not be a success, may skimp on details--we rarely see Alex sneaking drinks, and she seems to have no friends but Jacky, a smug lawyer and a drag queen--but Fonda’s is a virtuoso job anyway. Her acting has a cut-glass clarity that keeps the nightmare in focus.

Bridges is almost equally good. His splendidly natural air--that typically frank, easy, loose-limbed spontaneity--plays off perfectly against Fonda. And so is Julia, a superb actor who hasn’t hit his movie potential yet and who, here, has the fewest opportunities. Even so, Lumet gives him one long, single-take scene with Fonda (changing her hair, quietly discussing their past, his future) that’s a little classic of compression and dark, sad undercurrents.

The actors are so fine that the film’s failure to break out of form becomes maddening. Lumet (the New York City specialist) and his cinematographer, Andrzej Bartkowiak, have gotten an original look, a kind of empty, minimalist L.A., with swatches of expressionist color under a strange blue sky that presses down ominously.

But Lumet is a director who really depends on actors and scripts, and here, as elsewhere in the ‘80s, he’s like a musician who’s developed brilliant technique but is forced to play the wrong music, stuff that’s too easy for him. If he could make “The Pawnbroker” over again now, or if he had a story like the recent Dutch movie “Taste of Water” or Bernard Malamud’s novel “The Assistant,” you feel he could really soar.

In the end, the movie has a decent sensibility but no real surprises or depths. It’s an optimistic, humanitarian shocker that wants to offer explanations for every nightmare (unlike, say, “Blood Simple” or “Blue Velvet”), which limits its potency. But, in its very optimism and lucidity, there’s something to admire.

And if “The Morning After” (MPAA-rated: R) isn’t completely admirable, it still offers some absorbing scenes, eerie grace tones, surprising shots of humanity. It does have something extra, a little more humanity and personality than average, and we should be grateful that Lumet and his actors can seize upon it.

‘THE MORNING AFTER’ A 20th Century Fox release of a Lorimar presentation of an American Filmworks production. Producer Bruce Gilbert. Director Sidney Lumet. Script James Hicks. Camera Andrzej Bartkowiak. Associate producers Wolfgang Glattes, Lois Bonfiglio. Executive producer Faye Schwab. Production design Albert Brenner. Editor Joel Goodman. Music Paul Chihara. With Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia, Diane Salinger, Richard Foronjy, Geoffrey Scott.

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).