A MOVIE TO DINE FOR

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The Pilaggi Brothers, Primo and Secondo (Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci), are simple souls. Italian immigrants, they believe that if they bring the best of their native land's cuisine to America, fortune will inevitably follow. They have, however, picked the wrong time--the 1950s--and the wrong place--the Jersey shore--for culinary proselytizing. Perhaps even the wrong street, for across from their modest establishment stands Pascal's, whose proprietor (Ian Holm) is busy noisily and prosperously ladling red sauce across his customers' tin palates and quietly scheming his rivals' ruin.

They are, in a way, easy marks. Primo, the chef, is a shy and brooding purist, utterly unable to compromise one of his exquisite risottos, no matter what the market demands. Secondo, the maitre d', shoots his cuffs with elegant panache but is not quite the shrewd and worldly businessman he thinks he is. When Pascal proposes that they throw a scrumptious, sumptuous banquet, promising to supply a celebrity (Louis Prima, the old-time band leader) whose patronage, Pascal assures them, will bring saving glamour and publicity to their enterprise, they invest the last of their capital in the plan. On one level this turns out to be a bad deal. For the pressures of the big night bring out the worst in a lot of its key participants. But it does messily resolve a lot of romantic muddles involving three terrific actresses (Isabella Rossellini, Minnie Driver and Allison Janney), and it brings out the genius in Primo. The meal he serves offers everyone the consolations of--no other word for it--art.

We are, naturally, speaking in metaphors here, but how delicately they are sauteed, mainly by Tucci, who co-wrote the film with his cousin Joseph Tropiano and co-directed it with Campbell Scott. And how gracefully they are placed before us by a cast assembled from the four corners of show business and clearly delighted to be in a movie that is both as real as food on the table and as hauntingly evanescent as its taste on one's tongue.

When all is said and done, but not yet fully digested, Secondo enters his kitchen, makes an omelet, shares it with Primo and an assistant. All this is done in real time, without change of camera angle or exchange of words. It is spectacularly confident filmmaking, honoring our ability to draw our own conclusions about what we've seen and the medium's rarely employed ability to convey major emotions through minimal means. And it is completely emblematic of--oh, let's just say it--a completely delicious movie.