Mise-En-Mall

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

For Libby Gelman-Waxner, Premiere magazine's film critic, heaven is surely an eternal Donna Karan sample sale and hell an ongoing panel discussion of Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. Libby is the rare critic who would rather curl up with a Slim Fast and a copy of Cosmo than a Merlot and an issue of Cahiers du Cinema.

If You Ask Me (St. Martin's Press; 236 pages; $20.95) is a collection of Libby's tremendously funny columns, which have attracted a devoted readership since they first appeared in 1989. Not all Libby's fans know, however, that she is actually the alter ego of playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey, Addams Family Values), who has created not a mere movie reviewer but a brilliantly realized character worthy of her own Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom.

Libby's columns serve as a continuing account of her amusingly mundane life and the peripheral role that movies play in it. Married to an orthodontist, she is an "activewear buyer" for a department store. She goes to an analyst for "movie-lepsy," described as a condition "triggered by any number of cinematic images: William Hurt repressing his emotions, Robert Duvall in a cowboy hat, anything involving a child who has been mute since a parent or pet died."

For Libby movies are not about plot or subtext or mise-en-scene -- they are about coiffure, accessories and plastic surgery. Libby on Richard Gere in Pretty Woman: "He has silvery hair and acts mostly by squinting; Richard's become much more talented just by losing his contact lenses." Does it really matter that Pauline Kael retired?