BEATINGS AND SWEET MURMURS

By RICHARD CORLISS

YOUNG KEVIN REEVEY HAS RUN away from St. Vincent's orphanage in Newfoundland, and when the police bring him back, Brother Peter Lavin, who runs the place, is there waiting. Full of forgiveness, the clergyman brings Kevin into his study and sits the boy on his lap. "You're home now, child," he says, kissing Kevin's cheek, his neck, his bare chest. His passion spilling into parental devotion, he whispers, "Mama loves you." Finally Kevin dares to mutter, "My mother's dead and always will be. You're not my mother." Poor little fellow, he must be punished-flogged until his body is one deep bruise-then consoled. Brother Lavin carries Kevin to bed, in a father's loving embrace, and the boy whimpers himself to sleep.

The Boys of St. Vincent-a two-part film aired to great acclaim by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1992, then shown to further hosannas last summer in a Manhattan movie house-is surely the most compelling and edifying horror movie of the decade. It is written (by Des Walsh, John N. Smith and Sam Grana), directed (by Smith) and acted with a dreadful delicacy that subtly exposes both the sickness of the abusers and the beauty of the abused. But when the film plays next Sunday and Monday on cable's A&E network, that extraordinary scene between Lavin and Kevin will have been trimmed, as will a few others. Apparently, U.S. viewers lack the sophistication of their northern neighbors. The cutting of these scenes is nearly the artistic equivalent of Lavin's crimes. It is abuse under the pretext of protecting sensitive souls.

What's left is still shocking. For in the film's first half, set in the 1970s, we see Lavin and his colleagues misuse their authority as teachers, surrogate parents, men of God. They instruct these utterly dependent children in their catechism. They impose discipline with a belt buckle, their faces hinting at the pleasure they take in their power. At night they show their tender side, with sweet murmurs and a hand under a boy's bed sheets.

The truly daring thing about The Boys (a work of fiction inspired by several real cases of Canadian children abused by Catholic clergy) is not the statement it makes but the questions it raises. The agony of young Kevin (bravely played by Johnny Morina) finds its evil twin in the torment of Lavin (a brilliantly implosive turn by Henry Czerny). Here is a man isolated in his lust and duty; years later he says to a psychiatrist, "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of me."

The brothers, though, have protectors: the police, politicians and religious hierarchy. These worthies are at first unwilling to believe in Lavin's crimes; then they cover up the mess, forgetting that the young victims have wounds that may not heal. Already abandoned, the orphans have been betrayed by men who invoke God as a threat and use a caress as torture.

Finally, the lads do escape-to a sympathetic detective and (in the second half, set 15 years later) an outraged public. That a kind of justice awaits the boys of St. Vincent does not make this a simple tragedy-and-triumph movie. It means there are still heroes in the land. They may be frightened boys-or grown men who see righteous revenge achieved for the boys they once were. A&E might have shown a little of that courage to honor them and this splendid film.