IN Damage (World 9.35pm) director Louis Malle created one of the most passionless movies about passion ever. Jeremy Irons, playing a Conservative minister who becomes infatuated with his son's French girlfriend (Juliette Binoche), has the appearance throughout of a man with a large, sharp object wedged in his underwear.
The plot of Damage is pure soap opera melodrama, but Malle imbues the material with an almost morbid seriousness. Nor is there any irony in the screenplay. The controversy that coloured the film's release now seems ridiculous. Surely no one could find this erotic? Irons' couplings with Binoche - and there are many of them - are cold, clinical and, when they do it with the faint British sun shining through Venetian blinds, terminally arty.
The problem is that Damage carries very little conviction. It is stark and brittle (as is Irons) but it should have been passionate and traumatic. The only character with balls, if you'll pardon the expression, is Miranda Richardson's scorned Conservative wife. COMPARED to Three Of Hearts (Pearl 9.35pm), which is shallow, contrived and less than credible, Damage is a raging torrent of human emotion. Three Of Hearts, which does the love triangle routine with a lesbian twist, goes down as a flop, despite enjoying some modest success with the 20-something dating crowd, the same people who are now watching Friends.
IN The X-Files (Pearl 8.30pm) we are being asked to believe, once again, that a strange amorphous form is responsible for a number of deaths, starting with a two-year-old who gets wiped out by a miniature train while chasing a helium-filled balloon in the park. Mulder (David Duchovny) believes it is a poltergeist, but then he would, wouldn't he? IF you watch gymnastics you will already know that young Chinese people seem to be able to put legs and arms where legs and arms are generally not designed to be put. This is all down to China's specialist gymnastics schools, where they start them young in the contortion business.
Hong Kong Connection (Pearl, 6.50pm) looks at the quest for tomorrow's champions, and the countless stories of sacrifice and failure that go with every one of success.
IT'S back to the Serengeti, a place that must be teeming with documentary cameramen, for the colourful series Untamed Africa (World, 8.35pm). This episode, called The Return Of Duma, follows a female cheetah who has lost her cubs after being held captive by two dominant males. FILMS on Cable Movie Channel: Misty (9.30am). The entangled love lives of three Hong Kong students. One falls in love with the mistress of a friend's adopted father, another gets married and divorced within a year, and another seems destined for tragedy. Peter Pau directed (in 1992) and the stars are Leung Ka-fai, Carrie Ng and Waise Lee.