TELEVISION : ‘Serving in Silence’ Left Too Much Starch In

On a landscape where dazzle is equated with Heather Locklear, NBC’s soldierly, spit-and-polish, eyes-forward account of Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer’s war with the Army heaves with importance like a chest full of ribbons and spangly medals.

Its executive producers include Barbra Streisand. Its star is Glenn Close. Its theme is the military versus gays. Its controversy is a fleeting private kiss between two women that has heated the nation’s homophobic alarmists to a boil.

So what went wrong? Why so tedious?

Blunted by its own starchy military bearing, “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” is more stiff salute than the meat of absorbing drama. Either it doesn’t do justice to the real Cammermeyer’s personality, or this woman, despite her admirable qualities and bold resistance to military bias against her sexual orientation, is just too much of a drab, boring Girl Scout to hold your interest.

In any case, you end up feeling more positive about her than about those who put her story to film.

Cammermeyer is the 52-year-old divorced mother of four whose 1992 discharge, after a sterling career as an Army nurse, brought into the sharpest focus yet the ghastly goofiness of the military’s policy toward gays.

In Cammermeyer’s case, her candid declaration of gayness during a security clearance interview cost her dearly, setting into motion a rigid military process that led to her temporary ouster from the Army. In 1994, a U.S. District Court judge ordered her reinstated, and the Army has appealed.

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Alison Cross’ script introduces Cammermeyer (Close) as she’s voluntarily giving up active duty--after an honored 25-year career, which included a Vietnam tour that earned her a Bronze Star--for reserve status as chief of nurses for the Washington National Guard. She’s a patriot, a true believer, the kind of dedicated soldier you envision dying with her boots on. Respected by everyone, she’s a solid Army citizen, an outstanding nurse and a loving mother with a house and conventional life in the suburbs. All seems swell.

Then in 1988 she meets Diane Divelbess (Judy Davis), a flirty, free-spirited Southern California artist with whom she immediately connects in a way that forces her to confront a facet of herself that she’s never acknowledged--that she’s a lesbian.

The fateful security clearance revelation comes a year later, leading to a demand for Cammermeyer’s resignation, which she rejects.

“You could commit murder and have a better chance of staying in,” a friendly legal officer says.

What’s pathetic is that he’s right.

Even when the Army ejects her after a hearing, though, she doesn’t retreat, instead enlisting the gay-rights Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in a legal fight to return her to the military.

Although nearly a head shorter than the 6-foot Cammermeyer, Close is very persuasive in spots. She’s strong when you’d expect her to be, vulnerable when you’d expect her to be. Cammermeyer’s gradual “outing” of herself to herself is nicely executed. And there’s an especially lovely scene here in which she buckles emotionally when disclosing her secret to her sons. They tell her they already know. Their mother’s eyes soften. A tender moment from director Jeff Bleckner and his cast.

One of Close’s attributes is that she seems always in control. Unfortunately, that control translates here to chilly distance and aloofness when Cammermeyer is in the vicinity of the woman she is said to adore: her companion (and presumably lover) Divelbess.

A largely plodding pace doesn’t help. Yet the story’s lethal kink is its utter lack of passion. It’s a chronicle without soul. At one point, Grethe (as everyone calls her) and Diane are sitting on a bed. “I love you,” says Grethe, resting her head on Diane’s shoulder. Diane then rests her chin on Grethe’s head. At least there are no sexually transmitted diseases here.

Nor close embraces. Grethe hugs her kids, hugs her fellow soldiers, hugs just about everyone. But is it an accidental omission--or indicative of NBC and the filmmakers worriedly looking back over their shoulders at menacing homophobes--that the one person she never tightly embraces is Diane?

Why so little intimacy between two people whose togetherness shares the movie’s centerfold with Grethe’s struggle against the military? Despite Diane being quite a hot-looking dish, this mostly hands-off relationship appears, well, sisterly.

Perhaps the Norwegian-born Cammermeyer is not given to physical displays of affection. Occasionally, though, you’d think she’d cut loose and at least pat Diane on the butt. Or vice versa. If an underdog heterosexual couple were this humdrum on TV, you’d ditch them fast for “Murphy Brown.”

And oh, yes, The Kiss .

Don’t build your evening around it. Arriving with about a minute left in the movie, it’s less a smooch than a smich, nine seconds of gentle contact that will hardly subvert America. The scene deserves to be much less an issue than the largely static storytelling leading up to it.

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“Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” airs at 9 tonight NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39).