IN LOVE AND WAR

Starring Chris O'Donnell and Sandra Bullock Directed by Richard Attenborough Rated PG-13, with violence and brief nudity Running time 115 minutes With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 4

(Jan. 23, 1997) -- Before Ernest Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms, he said hello to Agnes von Kurowsky. She was a 26-year-old nurse with whom the 18-year-old Hemingway purportedly fell in love during the Italian campaign of World War I.

Young Hemingway had volunteered to drive a Red Cross ambulance in Italy in the months before the U.S. entered the war. Overeager to see battle, the future writer suffered a serious leg wound in the trenches. Von Kurowsky helped nurse him back to health and won his heart.

Though probably not much more than a brief adolescent infatuation, the relationship has grown in stature as a bit of literary lore. Von Kurowsky was the inspiration for Catherine Barkley, the object of affection for the central character in Hemingway's second novel, A Farewell to Arms.

And now director Richard Attenborough has inflated the romance even further in his new film, In Love and War. Sandra Bullock is commendable in her first performance in a period film, as von Kurowsky. Chris O'Donnell portrays Hemingway.

Attenborough apparently sees In Love and War as a kind of companion piece to his fine 1993 film Shadowlands. But while the earlier, far-superior movie portrayed a September romance involving an older writer (C.S. Lewis), In Love and War is about a writer-to-be, entangled in first love.

And the time line isn't the only difference. Unlike Shadowlands, which was based on a well-crafted stage play and which seemed distinctly plausible and realistic, In Love and War offers the sudsy, overripe aura of an old-fashioned Hollywood bio-pic.

Throughout In Love and War, much ado was being made of not much. Certainly, the rambunctious young Hemingway was clearly enamored by the attractive, older Agnes. But it's hard to imagine much romance actually occurring between a kid in bed with his leg in a cast and a very busy nurse in a hospital overflowing with war wounded.

It's also clear from published source material that In Love and War adds a lot of material with little basis in fact. The screenplay gets Hemingway and Agnes into bed together, and includes a sequence years later -- a sort of epilogue, when Agnes visits Hemingway at a cabin in northern Michigan. Nobody knows if the first event ever occurred, and everybody knows the second event never did.

That's the sort of convenient, sentimental dramatic license frequently found in old Hollywood movie biographies.

Here, such imagination seems too obvious; maybe even a bit corny. (Wouldn't the film have been more engrossing and intelligent if some questions remained unanswered about the passion between the young soldier and the older nurse?)

The most winning aspect of In Love and War is Bullock's spunky, effervescent portrait of Agnes. She's depicted as a thoroughly modern, free-spirited woman whose sense of dedication is matched by a desire to enjoy life.

Chris O'Donnell has the more challenging task -- portraying a character of larger-than-life stature. The actor bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Hemingway, which helps. He also has a youthful exuberance, which seems appropriate.

The script, though, sometimes requires posturing and dialogue intended to foreshadow Hemingway's status as one of America's greatest writers -- and at such moments O'Donnell is fighting a losing battle as he tries not to play it too obviously or as parody.

The film also fails to overcome one basic dilemma: With A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway already created the most artful and imaginative interpretation of the events. Even at its best, In Love and War could only hope to come in a distant second.