The Raging Moon

That formidable chasm between sodden bathos and genuine pathos is adroitly leaped by the writer-director Bryan Forbes and a professional cast in "Long Ago Tomorrow," the British romantic drama that opened at the Beekman Theater yesterday. While they haven't created a landmark film by any means, Mr. Forbes and company have fashioned an understated but passionate portrait of young people under tragic stress that evokes real compassion, an honest tear or two and, believe it or not, a chuckle here and there. While neither the title of Peter Marshall's 1966 novel, "The Raging Moon" (under which the film was released in England), or "Long Ago Tomorrow" makes more than a poetic point, it is clear almost from the start that the film is not involved with the treacly banalities of soap opera as is, say, the movies' classic example of the genre, "Love Story." This is, simply, a love story involving two paraplegics: Bruce, a working-class, brash, womanizing type felled by a football injury, and Jill, an upper-middle-class doctor's daughter. The two, imprisoned in wheelchairs in an institution, face a forbidding future with consummate bravery. As noted, Mr. Forbes and his principals have not come up with stereotypes. As portrayed by Nanette Newman (Mrs. Forbes in private life), Jill, struggling to free her reluctant but dutiful fiancé from his obligation to her, is vibrantly touching as a woman experiencing love for the first time. Her courtship with Malcolm McDowell as the brusque, iconoclastic Bruce, who has begun to express himself in poetry and letters, is a touching (and funny) affair, approached with seeming casualness. In the process, the two enliven the drab existence of the other incapacitated residents. Mr. McDowell is both defiantly belligerent and gentle, a believable, once-rugged male suddenly and helplessly involved with love he desperately wants to fulfill but can't. Miss Newman is tender, adult and feminine as the ill-fated Jill, who briefly finds joy in his poignant affection. They are abetted by some solid vignettes from Georgia Brown, the song belter of "Oliver!", as an understanding staff member, and Geoffrey Whitehead as Mr. McDowell's square but loving brother. Touching on one small aspect of the human condition, "Long Ago Tomorrow" is a subdued but authentically moving view of unusual but real people and a real love story.