Odd Coupling

By RICHARD CORLISS

WHITE PALACE

Directed by Luis Mandoki

Screenplay by Ted Tally and Alvin Sargent

It could be an upscale moviegoer's idea of the ultimate great date. What middle-aged woman would mind being romanced by gorgeous James Spader? His face is a bouquet of sensitive sensuality; he proved he was a good listener as the impotent confessor in sex, lies, and videotape. And what young fellow wouldn't care to wake up on a couch with Susan Sarandon's head in his lap? From The Rocky Horror Picture Show through Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, The Hunger and Bull Durham, she has been the American cinema's beacon of seductive intelligence: our own Statue of Libertine.

For just a while, White Palace makes good on the promise and seriousness of these two splendid movie icons. He is a brooding Brahmin copywriter, she a blowsy waitress who tries to pick him up at a bar. It's class vs. crass. While he acts aloof and demure, she flatters his prettiness, then gets quickly to the business at hand. Soon they are shrugging off age prejudices like unwanted clothes, the quicker to satisfy their passion. She: "I'm 43." He: "I'm 27." Who cares? Wham! Their sex scenes, more intense than anything in the NC- 17 Henry & June, manage to suggest that all lovemaking carries, like a secret genetic code, the memory of all previous loves.

But the film is determined to be about something less interesting than sexual combustion. Max is a neat freak, Nora a slob, so for a reel they play Oscar and Felix. She has no friends, his are nudgy -- this movie hates middle- class Jews a lot. Then the lovers must break up and make up, and the ho boy! becomes ho hum. White Palace settles into stolid ordinariness, after flirting with being a handsome essay on the grandeur of reciprocal lust.