Illuminata

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

The setting is a 19th century, New York City theatrical company, but this utterly beguiling film has a European manner about it. Everyone in it is either darkly obsessive or madly grand. The story--Turturro is a playwright struggling to finish a play--is an excuse for a lot of ill-considered, utterly forgivable behavior by a wonderful cast, in which Katherine Borowitz is calmly radiant as the company's leading lady, Christopher Walken deliriously funny as a drama critic. The direction is self-consciously sober, lending an odd, artful weight to the prevailing giddiness.

--By Richard Schickel