Short Schiff

MOVIES

To see or not to see

Devil in the Flesh: You can't take your eyes off Maruschka Detmers, nor will you want to. A darker and sultrier version of the young Jane Fonda, she gives Marco Bellocchio's rendition of the famous Raymond Radiguet novel a spellbinding erotic center, and she absolutely steamrolls her young co-star, Federico Pitzalis, a comely but ineffectual noodle whom we're meant to think quite devastating. Detmers's drop-dead pucker seems to have flattened Bellocchio too: Devil in the Flesh has none of his impetuous, fidgety energy. It's a blah movie, X-rated nono's and all.

My Life as a Dog: Awfully precious, but in the end almost as endearing as it thinks it is. The Swedish director Lasse Hailstrom has made the usual cuddlesome coming-of-age film, but the details are fresh, the humor is arhythmic and odd, and the twelve-year-old hero, Ingemar, has a prankish spirit that genuinely tickles. Ingemar's pug face and bushy eyebrows suggest a wily pup whom puberty will transform into a rampaging werewolf. In this case, a sequel will be more than welcome.

STEPHEN SCHIFF