WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

AT NO POINT IN DOLORES CLAIBORNE is its eponymous protagonist tied to a railroad track or strapped down in the path of a rapidly impending train or buzz saw. And a good thing too, for this adaptation of Stephen King's best seller (does he write anything else?) also lacks a hero, or indeed any remotely admirable masculine figure, eager to race to her rescue.

These omissions are not careless. King is a storyteller who boldly uses the most primitive and melodramatic forms to explore very basic emotional issues, and this is his fantasia on feminist themes. Dolores (Kathy Bates) in some ways resembles the heroine of a gaslit theatrical enterprise of the 19th century. She is haunted by an ancient crime, stands falsely accused of a new one and is bedeviled by a policeman (Christopher Plummer) who could give Les Miserables' Inspector Javert lessons in sneering implacability.

But she is also a tough-minded, coarse-tongued woman who is supporting herself by taking care of Mrs. Donovan (Judy Parfitt), a rich-bitch invalid, and mourning her estrangement from Selena, her deeply disturbed daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Precisely because of the absence of decent men in her life, Dolores is obliged to combine traditional masculine and feminine roles in one surprising, ultimately endearing persona.

And the villain? Why, he's as broadly written (by Tony Gilroy) and played (by David Strathairn) as anyone who ever twirled a wickedly waxed moustache. A drunk and a wife beater, Joe St. George is Dolores' husband and Selena's father-so suspiciously sweet with the latter that we know long before we're told that he lusted unnaturally for her when she was a child and is the source of her repressed memories--and more than deserves the bad end Dolores arranges for him.

But that's only half the story, for King is never niggardly when it comes to plotting. Working us toward the fairly easy verdict of justifiable homicide in Joe's death, King must also relieve us of our rather trumped-up suspicions about Dolores' role in the death of Mrs. Donovan and arrange a just reward for the years of misery Dolores has endured.

Sometimes it seems the point of this exercise is simply to complicate--mainly by arbitrarily withholding vital information--what is, in its emotional essence, a not very complicated matter. But the sensible formality of Taylor Hackford's direction has the effect of cooling the film's narrative frenzies and helping the actors dig some simple, truthful stuff out of the hubbub. There is something great souled in Bates' work, which is at once sweet and fierce, hesitant and determined. She seems always to be surprising herself with her actions, brushing aside the calculations of the story with the sheer force of her humanity.