'Roxanne' Under The Stars On 32nd St.

Local Screenings

With its bracing green-mountain locations, there's no great romantic farce better suited to the open air than 1987's Roxanne, which unspools at 8:30 tonight at the Abell Open Space (300 block of E. 32nd St. in Charles Village).

With Daryl Hannah in the title role, this inspired update of Cyrano de Bergerac, written by its star, Steve Martin, and directed by Fred Schepisi, leaves the same kind of amorous afterglow that Splash did. And it has a breezy literacy all its own. The filmmakers stick closely to the story of a gallant man with a harlequin's nose. They show him using his passionate love poetry to help another man, who's handsome yet clumsy, win the heart of Roxanne, the woman of both their dreams. Yet despite the familiarity of the tale, the movie is marvelously fresh and sweet.

Sporting a schnoz that his pet bird uses as a perch, Martin doesn't stint on the poignance; he doesn't overdo it, either. His character, C.D. Bales, isn't a soldier-poet like Edmond Rostand's Cyrano, but an acrobatic and brainy fire chief in the sheltered, idyllic town of Nelson, Wash. (really, British Columbia). C.D., like Cyrano, is at war with incompetence, simply in a more genial and modest way. This movie even bathes its bad guys in sunshine. They include a mayor (played by Fred Willard) who thinks Nelson can become another Aspen if it sponsors events like an Oktoberfest in July, and a volunteer fireman and lounge lizard (John Kapelos) who runs a store called All Things Dead.

Screenwriter Martin turns Roxanne from an impressionable young aristocrat to a strong-minded astronomer who's in the process of discovering her own comet. And he transforms Cyrano's comrade-in-arms Christian, who looks as dashing as Roxanne feels a brilliant lover should, into the amiable, word-shy fireman Chris (Rick Rossovich). In this movie, Rossovich, not Martin, plays the Jerk, but Chris is lighthearted and likable. As Roxanne, Hannah's otherworldly luminosity elicits wholehearted love poetry, which Martin extemporizes with a tricky, scat-like delivery - sing-song yet still startling. Martin's whole body has a dancing duelist's line: when he slices one of his opponents with a tennis racket, his poised legs and outstretched arms seem to proclaim, "Voila!"

The clear sky above the town of Nelson tops the movie like a crown. Watching this film, you feel that if you can see beyond your nose, you can plant your name in the stars.