Prague bedsprings

PHIL Kaufman's film version of Milan Kundera's acclaimed novel, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being (Pearl, 9.30pm), is either a five-star classic or a meandering love story, with lots of sex, disguised as philosophy. Wherever you stand after 171 minutes one thing is certain; this is very much Kaufman's version of the book, giving far more emphasis to the Prague Spring of 1968 when Soviet tanks rolled into the Czech capital than Kundera did.

The book takes trouble to explain the title. Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a brilliant playboy surgeon, living what he calls a ''light'' existence, free of emotional chains and commitment. He falls in love and marries the provincial Tereza (a sultry performance from Juliette Binoche, whose middle name is Sultry) but continues to be rather liberal with his sexual energies, notably with an old flame called Sabina (Lena Olin) who has a penchant for having her photograph taken in a bowler hat and stockings.

Sexand love, to a man with Tomas' philosophy, are not the same thing.

The three protagonists are exceptional, the historical backdrop is suitably volatile and Kaufman (The Right Stuff) has not dispensed with the broodiness that made The Unbearable Lightness Of Being such a good book. The Prague Spring is deftly and dramatically handled by splicing newsreel footage to simulated shots featuring Day-Lewis and Binoche.

But in the end it doesn't really add up to much, floating haphazardly along as it looks for a point to make that everyone will understand. Much of the time it sits on a fence with its manhood threatened, one leg dangling in art-house territory and the other in Hollywood.

That said, it was never going to be an easy book to turn into a film and Kaufman has had a good shot at it. It was filmed in Geneva and Lyons, the latter standing in for Prague where Kundera's work was banned.

THERE are equally black moments in Something Wild (World, 9.30pm), a film that looks initially like a comedy but half way through produces a demon from up its sleeve which left some critics alarmed when it was released in 1986. The demon is Ray Liotta, playing a psycho.