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"People are always afraid of bad taste," says French Writer-Director Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Demy certainly isn't. He sprinkles it like contaminated pixy dust over little film fairy tales. The Model Shop, Demy's first film made in the U.S., continues along in the same airy tradition.

Demy's hero, George Matthews (Gary Lockwood), is a 26-year-old dropout with the draft hanging over his carefully combed head. He wakes up in the morning murmuring "Love, love," much to the annoyance of his chick (Alexandra Hay), who knows that he isn't thinking of her. Even George doesn't know exactly whom he is thinking about, so he jumps into his little green sports car and tools around Los Angeles, searching for love and himself. He finds both through an exquisite Frenchwoman named Lola (Anouk Aimee) who earns her living as a "model" for passionate amateur photographers. After a night of love, or what passes for love under Demy's dewy auspices, George selflessly gives Lola the plane fare back to Paris, ditches his chick and prepares to serve his country.

Demy does in fact use the back streets and alleys of Los Angeles to maximum tacky effect. His characters, however, have far less meaning than the "Eats" and "Service" signs. Although many of the same people recur in each of his films --Lola, for example, was both the subject and the title of his first feature--they have about as much depth as wallpaper. Indeed, Demy uses his characters like wallpaper, merely as human interior decoration. Anouk Aimee is lovely and gracious as Lola, but her seductive simplicity is too hard-edged for Demy's blurry art nouveau. Dressed in clinging blue T shirt and form-fitting jeans, Gary Lockwood makes his way through a thankless role mostly by shifting his feet uncomfortably. Either those jeans are just too tight, or he's trying to stay out of Demy's way.

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