A Middle-Aged but Slimmer Fest : Movies: In its 56th year, Venice’s international event is showing just 80 films but still draws auteurs and stars.

The future of the International Film Festival here has been surrounded by fervent speculation, just as there is about this exquisite city itself, perched upon insecure foundations in its intricate system of canals.

Venice has recently been eclipsed as an end-of-summer festival by Toronto, which is bigger, better organized and within easier reach of Hollywood. But in its 56th year, Venice has emerged leaner and meaner: Just 80 films were screened, half its 1997 total.

And under the leadership of Alberto Barbera, its third director in four years, Venice is playing to its traditional strength as a home for auteurs. Films by Jane Campion, Mike Leigh and Lasse Hallstrom are in competition with new work from Chinese filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Zhang Yuan, and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

Yet Venice is not exclusively a high-minded festival, and the public and paparazzi alike have been delighted by the appearance on the Lido of several star names. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman flew in for the festival’s opening film, the late Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.” Michael Caine and Tobey Maguire were on hand to promote Hallstrom’s “The Cider House Rules,” adapted for film by John Irving from his own novel. Kate Winslet, star of Campion’s “Holy Smoke,” flew in from London to join co-star Harvey Keitel.

Antonio Banderas, making his directorial debut with “Crazy in Alabama,” showed up, along with the film’s star--his wife, Melanie Griffith. And Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter arrive today for the world premiere of David Fincher’s “Fight Club,” which ends the festival.

There is furious gossip on the Lido about who will win the big awards in Venice. The speculation remains just that, for this year’s jury is headed by temperamental Serbian director Emir Kusturica, thought to be capable of swaying the jury to his own inclinations--whatever they may be. Word has circulated that Kusturica has been hard to pin down to attend all the necessary competition screenings, which only adds fuel to the gossip.

But two foreign-language films seem to be strongly placed for awards--Kiarostami’s starkly beautiful “The Wind Will Carry Us,” about a Tehran research team that descends for unclear reasons on a remote Kurdish hillside village, and Zhang Yimou’s crowd-pleaser “Not One Less,” which stars 13-year-old Wei Minzhi, who plays a substitute teacher in a remote rural school. When a 10-year-old boy flees to the big city in search of work, she tracks him down. Unashamedly emotional, “Not One Less” has been warmly applauded at all its Venice screenings.

Some Entries Drawing Mixed Responses

Campion’s “Holy Smoke” has divided opinion most sharply. Winslet is widely deemed excellent as Ruth, an Australia girl seduced by a religious cult in India. Her family lures her home, then hires an American deprogrammer (Keitel) to straighten her out. But a powerful sexual attraction between them thwarts his plans.

British director Leigh, best known for small-scale, intimately observed character-based works, has made a sharp left turn with “Topsy Turvy,” an account of the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan, who wrote popular comic operettas in London at the start of the century. Many found “Topsy Turvy” too long at two hours and 40 minutes, and non-English speakers found the lyrics of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works hard to understand. But others found it amusing.

Another change of style was seen in horror-meister Wes Craven’s sortie into lachrymose drama with “Music of the Heart,” starring Meryl Streep as Roberta Guaspari, an inspirational New Yorker who teaches inner-city kids to play violin.

Hallstrom’s “The Cider House Rules,” set in New England, has received praise for its handsome look and for two strong central appearances--by Caine as a kindly orphanage doctor and abortionist named Dr. Larch, and by Maguire as Homer, a young boy who grows up in Larch’s orphanage, is mentored by him, then makes his way in the outside world.

‘Sweet’ a Change of Pace for Allen

But perhaps the biggest surprise here came from Woody Allen, whose new film, “Sweet and Lowdown,” was screened out of competition. Warm and wistful, it lacks the sourness of his recent films “Celebrity” and “Deconstructing Harry.” It stars Sean Penn as Emmet Ray, an egotistical Depression-era jazz guitarist, kleptomaniac and part-time pimp. This boasting reprobate forms an unlikely relationship with Hattie (Samantha Morton), a mute girl with a ravenous appetite he picks up in Atlantic City.

After the screening of “Fight Club” Friday, dozens of film critics huddled in groups in the Venice sunshine arguing the movie’s flaws and virtues. The consensus seemed to be that Fincher had pulled off a stunning visual coup. But some argued that “Fight Club’s” evocation of brutal male violence could potentially incite copycat behavior.

Who will win the big prize here tonight? The smart money favors the revered Kiarostami. But jury Chairman Kusturica may have other ideas entirely.