MOVIE REVIEW : ‘NADINE’--A LIGHT, MOVING TRIBUTE TO TEXAS’ LI’L DARLIN’S

Robert Benton’s “Nadine” (selected theaters) is a souffle-light little throwaway about lovers, larceny and losers, but mostly it is a deeply felt tribute to Texas womanhood. And since Kim Basinger is Nadine, there’s every reason in the world to feel deeply.

At this moment in 1954, Nadine and Vernon Hightower are almost an ex-item. Vernon (the estimable Jeff Bridges) has made the ultimate marital mistake of pouring his time, energy and money into his echoing Bluebonnet Lounge instead of lavishing it on Nadine.

Feeling sinned against and teed-off besides, Nadine is reduced to manicuring at the Alamo Beauty Parlor and falling for the oldest line in the art-portrait photography business, “I’m a close, personal friend of Hugh Hefner’s.”

A little distance, a little time for reflection and even Nadine can see through that one, and she wants her art studies back. It puts her, right place, wrong time, at photographer Jerry Stiller’s studio just in time to witness a murder and get this movie off and zig-zagging hysterically down these dusty Austin roads.

If “Nadine” has a problem, it’s because it’s pretty much the light beer of movies. It’s about people more than plot, and the mysteries of marriage more than anything else, but it’s sweetly thin. It doesn’t even have the richness of Benton’s other great comedy of character, “The Late Show.”

The peculiar thing is that you may just not mind, since the chemistry between the divine Nadine and the hapless Vernon is so tangible--and it’s such fun to be in their wrangling, lustful company. And because Benton has stacked the deck so well, using Gwen Verdon as Nadine’s closest confidante, Glenne Headly as a young woman who has Vernon directly in her sights and Rip Torn as the big, bad political maneuverer, a slightly toned-down version of his 10-gallon terror in “Songwriter.”

The story is fleshed out by harrowing chase scenes with a distinct silent-movie flavor as Vernon and Nadine are pursued by Torn’s two mountainous hit men. It’s here, as she climbs ladders and crawls bravely between rooftops, that we’re invited to sit back and revel in Nadine as something of an art study herself--in a peplumed suit and high heels that make her look like a long-stemmed apricot-colored rose. The lens of Nestor Almendros, that great burnisher of beauty, has a lot to do with this reveling.

Benton loves every dippy movement and little rabbity squeal that comes out of Nadine on the lam. He savors her crushing way with women stupid enough to be dating Vernon--Headly, whom Nadine refers to as Miss Low-Rent Lust. He admires Nadine’s mechanical ability, which includes a live-and-let-live attitude toward her spark plugs but does not preclude her handling a shotgun in a crunch. He loves the tinny edge to Nadine’s voice when she really means business, a tone that seems to come from somewhere inside a rusty metal can and can hurt you.

But Benton has admired offbeat, tenacious Texas women before, women like Bonnie Parker or the sisters of “Places in the Heart,” and he fashioned a little more of a movie for these Texas darlin’s. You admire “Nadine” in spite of its slightness, not because of it.

But for the sight of Bridges and Basinger in action--he supplying the firm, proprietary boost to her bottom as she maneuvers up into an attic; she, a picture of outrage as Headley stalks Vernon in his very own house trailer, you may be willing to forgive a lot.