The scene _ featuring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth as Jerry-and-Dean-type '50s entertainers and Rachel Blanchard as a hotel employee who gives new meaning to the term "room service" _ initially was considered racy enough to merit the dreaded NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" was in a similar quandary last year. It went out with the NC-17 tag; "Where the Truth Lies," meanwhile, will appear with no rating _ which filmmakers can opt to do.

Yes, the sex is sexy, but that's not the point. It's in no way shockingly graphic _ it's not like "9 Songs" or "Sex and Lucia." Presumably it's the implication of what these characters are doing that's got people all worked up.

Which is a shame. Because there's a lot more going on in Atom Egoyan's film that's worth thinking about afterward _ namely the mood, which is glitzy and sumptuous; and the performances, which are striking and even surprising, especially from Firth as the Dean Martin figure. It's a joy to watch him play the bad boy after a string of gentlemanly roles in period pieces and the "Bridget Jones" movies.

And Bacon seems to be channeling Jerry Lewis in full swagger, though he's even more effective when his character is long past his prime, trying to look cool with sideburns and an ascot but sadly aware of the neediness beneath his bravado.

With this tale of sex, death and deception, which the director adapted from the novel by Rupert Holmes (yes, the pina colada song guy), he wallows so devilishly in the conventions of film noir, he approaches parody. The melodramatic voiceover (courtesy of Alison Lohman as the intrepid girl reporter), the glamorous and gritty settings, the obsession with the ugly side of show business _ Egoyan takes them all and whips them up into a fizzy cocktail that's intoxicating but also flummoxing.

Part of the problem is his propensity for jumping back and forth in time, from 1972 Los Angeles to 15 years earlier, when a beautiful young fan turned up dead in the duo's hotel suite bathtub after a drug- and champagne-fueled threesome. Firth's Vince Collins and Bacon's Lanny Morris were never accused in her death, but the event destroyed their act and their friendship.

Lohman, as ambitious young entertainment reporter Karen O'Connor, is assigned to write the story of what happened that night. ("And the girl, Maureen," she asks Vince intensely during their first meeting, just as the music swells. "What happened to Maureen O'Flaherty?") But she's doing so at the same time Lanny is working on his memoirs.

Besides leaping around too frequently in time, Egoyan also jarringly alternates "Rashomon"-style between Lanny's version of the events, Vince's version (as he tells them to Karen) and Karen's own take on what happened as she probes deeper.

Of course they all turn out to be unreliable narrators _ and as evidenced in his earlier films, including "Felicia's Journey," Egoyan likes to provide disturbing twists through the revelation of his characters' twisted dark sides.

Karen herself gets entangled emotionally with both men, which lands her in a drug-induced tryst with a pretty blond in an Alice-in-Wonderland get-up, the lights from the shimmering backyard pool illuminating their activities in the living room of Vince's modern Hollywood Hills mansion.

Yes, a great deal of "Where the Truth Lies" comes across as vaguely David Lynchian, both tonally and in the striking, sometimes glowing visuals. And it all might leave you with the same feeling you get after one of Lynch's films: not totally sure about everything you just saw, but too dazzled to care.

"Where the Truth Lies," a ThinkFilm release, is not rated but wow _ name it and it's probably in there: language, nudity and violence, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Running time: 107 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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