Cinema: Sex And Death in Czechoslovakia THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

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For Tereza's role, Kaufman interviewed more than 100 actresses -- including, he says, three Oscar nominees -- before hiring Binoche, 23. In person, the French actress is a dazzler: her smile lights up the block. But in the film, with her fragile, bruised radiance and her eyes shooting heavenward for strength and mercy, Binoche seems as reluctant to display her body as Tereza is. "I find it difficult to be naked in a film," she says in her lilting accent. "It is the way people look at you with no eyes, as just a body. It is terrifying." The actress exudes that caged-animal terror, as well as something more subtle. The novel describes Tereza as seeing "her soul shining through the features of her face." That soul shines -- it burns -- when / Tereza visits a man's apartment and stumbles into a rape she has nearly insisted on. Binoche's face flushes rudely; her hand flutters in defense; she moans in protest or involuntary passion, then finally closes her eyes. It is complex acting worthy of a silent-screen diva.

Day Lewis, 30, earned nifty notices in 1986 as the fop in A Room with a View and as the gay fascist punk in My Beautiful Laundrette. Here he doesn't get to hit the histrionic high points because Tomas is a cool observer, even of his own seismic shifts. Tomas believes, as Day Lewis notes, that "love is the thing to beware of. And it seems as if Tomas has successfully created a life that will keep love at bay. But he sacrifices his freedom because he makes one decision, to submit to an overwhelming sensation. It is his submission, finally joyful, to the deep need for love." The viewer's submission may be the same. Admittedly, not everyone will welcome the overdue return of eroticism and intelligence in a $17 million art film. But doesn't all the world love what, at heart, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is? A love story, of course.