TODAY AT AFI FESTIVAL

F ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. All screenings , unless otherwise noted, are at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 800 Sunset Blvd. Information: (213) 466-1767.

Highly Recommended:

“sex, lies and videotape”(U.S., 1989; Steven Soderbergh; 1:50 & 7 p.m.). Soderbergh’s surprise triple winner at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival is, in some ways, an ultimate AIDS-era romance. In a modern Southern quadrangle, the selfish “old era” pair indulge themselves physically; the more intellectual, new-style couple watch themselves, and others, on videotape. Soderbergh mines a surprising amount of humor and intensity from this idea. His foursome--James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Laura San Giacomo and Peter Gallagher--are excellent; his style, a throwback to early ‘70s American and foreign art films, is sharp, dreamy and wistfully intelligent.

“TANGO”(France; Patrice Leconte; 7 p.m., Director’s Guild of America). The subject is evil, selfishness, corruption, misogyny. The style is breezy, bright, intoxicatingly funny and free. Patrice Leconte has dealt with sexual obsession darkly (“M. Hire”) and fantastically (“The Hairdresser’s Husband”). Here, he crafts a sly, sunshiney male-bonding comedy about three impromptu, obsessive pals: an aviator/wife-killer who got away with it (Richard Bohringer), the conniving judge who set him free (Philippe Noiret) and the judge’s nephew, (Thierry Lhermitte), a dopey philanderer whose wife has justifiably left him and who now craves revenge. These three killer-friends, egged on by the outlandishly woman-hating judge, embark on a ludicrous plot--and, as they do, women all around them enact some vengeance of their own. Obviously, it’ll be controversial. But not even Bertrand Blier has had better fun with the folly and kick of perpetual boyishness.

Recommended:

“GORILLA BATHES AT NOON”(Germany; Dusan Makavejev; 1:30 & 6:45 p.m.). Makavejev’s latest film is a sweet little comedy about the fall of communism. Not the fall, really: the belly-flop . . . It juxtaposes views of modern East Berlin, after the Wall has crumbled, with grandiose ersatz heroics culled from Mikhail Chiaureli’s bombastic 1949 Russian war epic, “The Fall of Berlin.” Makavejev links the two by suggesting that his main character--Svetozar Cvetkovic as a Russian soldier left behind--is the son of one of Chiaureli’s glassily noble Reichstag conquerors. What remains for the bike-riding, goofily grinning Cvetkovic? Black market high jinks, homelessness, low-comedy romps with a defaced statue of Lenin and all the shards of glory exploded.

Also: “Far Away From St. Petersburg” (Latvia; Alexander Hahn; 4:15 & 9:15 p.m.). In this would-be Latvian laugh-fest, a ridiculous charlatan born in St. Petersburg, Fla., tries to fake a Russian novel--which we then see in flabbergasting, samovar-slinging, Cossack-cruising detail. Broad, farcical, some funny moments.