Starring Spalding Gray Directed by Steven Soderburgh Unrated, but with profanity Running time 80 minutes We give this film a rating of 9 out of 10

(June 13, 1997) -- In Gray's Anatomy, monologuist Spalding Gray proves himself to be the worst kind of hypochondriac: one who actually has something wrong with him.

That's an oxymoron, of course, because a hypochondriac is someone who only imagines things are wrong with him -- and judging from Gray's history as outlined in the ongoing story of his life and career that make up his work, that probably describes Gray. Certainly he is neurotic, prone to any number of hypothetical illnesses, both mental and physical.

Yet in Gray's Anatomy, inventively directed by Steven Soderbergh, Gray recounts his bout with an actual eye ailment known as a macular pucker: specifically, a ripple in the macula, the area of the retina that provides acuity of vision.

To simply take a specialist's advice and have microsurgery to correct the problem, however, would have been too easy. Reared as a Christian Scientist (though long lapsed in his faith), Gray chose an entire laundry list of holistic and new-age cures, rather than submit himself to surgery.

Among other things, he went back to Christian Science briefly, then tried a Native American sweat-lodge ceremony in Minnesota. Unfortunately for him, he became so anxious in the claustrophobic heat of the sweat lodge that he forgot to try to ask the Great Spirit to relieve him of his eye problem.

Next he tried nutritional therapy, riding a bus to New Jersey to a radical nutritionist -- a little old man who tells him to eat only raw vegetables and to stop drinking. Finally, Gray trekked to the Philippines and a psychic surgeon billed as "the Elvis of psychic surgeons" -- who pulled what looked like bloody meatballs out of Japanese tourists and completely freaked Gray out (as if that were a challenge).

Unlike Jonathan Demme's Swimming to Cambodia or Nick Broomfield's Monster in a Box, Gray's Anatomy has been filmed without an audience. Instead, Soderbergh uses lighting and theatrical backdrops to suggest the scenes Gray describes -- whether it's a stand of fake trees and a cloud of steam for his journey to the Minnesota sweat lodge or bright lights and glass bricks to evoke various doctors' offices.

The result is much less stagy and more intimate than the other films (of which Demme's is far superior). Instead of speaking to an in-house audience (with the camera as interloping eavesdropper), Gray is talking directly to the camera -- to the movie audience. The feeling is more direct, like listening to a slightly crazy friend tell you a long anecdote about himself. Except, of course, that there is great art beneath the casual storytelling.

Soderbergh opens the film with a series of testimonials from anonymous people, all of whom have suffered what turn out to have been horrifying eye injuries. They discuss them matter-of-factly (the woman who mistook Crazy Glue for Visine, the fellow who had a thin wire penetrate his pupil), putting Gray's problems in drastic relief.

But then, what Gray is talking about here -- in a variety of ways that are both conscious and subconscious, plainly and metaphorically -- is less this specific ailment than one man's ongoing quest for insight into his own character and quirks. That would be particularly telling if you knew that his follow-up monologue, It's a Slippery Slope, waw about a midlife crisis during which he betrayed his marriage through infidelity and fathered an illegitimate child. Obviously, his vision into himself still required clarification.

Still, as Gray's Anatomy shows, Spalding Gray has an eye for a good story. And he is engaging company to boot.