Mortal Sin

By RICHARD CORLISS

I LOVE YOU TO DEATH

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan

Screenplay by John Kostmayer

Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) has a little trouble with numbers. In the confessional, whispering his sins of the past fortnight, Joey can't quite remember how often he committed adultery. Was it twelve times on ten occasions with seven women? He is determined to get it right, and if Joey doesn't, Kline does. His quietly fanatical scrupulousness makes the scene worth preserving in any moviegoer's imaginary cinematheque. Joey's confession comes at the beginning of I Love You to Death, a comedy that is hilarious all the way to the opening credits.

After that, forget it. The plot, based on a true story, has a vengeful wife (Tracey Ullman) determined to knock off her philandering husband (Kline), but the fellow proves strangely indestructible. This sort of homicidal fable demands the stiletto of satire -- the very weapon flourished by Italian director Pietro Germi in his brilliant '60s comedies Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned. But what played in Sicily for Germi doesn't work in Tacoma, Wash., for Lawrence Kasdan. This crime does not spring from the polluted mores of a medieval society; it is the private whim of an exasperated woman. I Love You to Death lacks the precision, ferocity and guts needed for black farce. It has the American failing: it just wants to be loved.

The tony cast members are made to play against their strengths. Kline buckles under the burden of an Italian accent not heard since the passing of Chico Marx. Ullman tamps down her TV exuberance and meekly disappears into the black hole of her role. Joan Plowright, a grande dame of English theater, plays a Yugoslav granny, and loses. William Hurt, as a dim doper hired to kill Joey, works beyond his range and beneath his gifts. The same may be said of Kasdan. The director of Body Heat and The Big Chill now wastes his time on the movie equivalent of a summer-stock trifle. Joey could tell him that sins of this magnitude ought to be confessed in private, not released to 1,075 theaters. R.C.