Seattle International Film Festival -- Movie Looks At Lifestyle Of Aging Swingers

David Schisgall's sexually explicit documentary about swingers, "The Lifestyle," sounds titillating.

Yet, for much of its length, it's like watching your grandparents swap bed partners and explain how liberated they are. Many of the participants are in their 60s, and some confess to leading a "double life" while still playing "mom and pop to the kids."

The 75-minute movie, which gets its only festival showing at 7:15 tonight at the Egyptian, examines the motives, changing values and surprising political conservatism of swingers from Orange County to Las Vegas to Littleton, Colo. (yes, that Littleton, though the film was completed long before the name became almost synonymous with high-school violence).

In a series of interviews, a widower says that his late wife would have wanted him to participate in group sex. One woman claims that lesbianism "has its place" in most orgies, but that male bisexuals are asked to leave. We learn from a young couple that the husband's enthusiasm for group sex was not matched by his wife's; they eventually decided to withdraw from "the lifestyle" rather than threaten their marriage.

They're almost the only people under 50 who are interviewed in "The Lifestyle." Intentionally or not, a portrait emerges of aging converts, desperate for a little sensation in their lives, who have become evangelical about their cause. The movie tries to be nonjudgmental, but it almost can't help making everyone look a little sad.

Here's the rest of today's schedule:

Egyptian

5 p.m. - "Titanic Town." Julie Walters stars in this British film about an Irish housewife who can't help getting involved in the early-1970s conflicts in Belfast, where the Titanic was built. The director, Roger Michell, also made "Persuasion" and the new Julie Roberts/Hugh Grant comedy, "Notting Hill."

7:15 p.m. - "The Lifestyle." See above.

9:30 p.m. - "Fire-Eater." Finnish-Swedish drama that covers 50 years in the lives of a mother and her twin daughters, beginning with the end of World War II.

Harvard Exit

5 p.m. - "Judy Berlin." Everyone's having a midlife crisis, even the twentysomethings, in this carefully cast suburban drama about the quiet desperation of compromised marriages and other failed relationships. Most of the picture, which was shot in black and white, takes place during a solar eclipse that casts an inhibition-loosening spell on the residents. A prize winner for best director (first-timer Eric Mendelsohn) at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it's worth seeing just to find out what Barbara Barrie and Madeline Kahn have been up to lately.

7:15 p.m. - "Speak to Me Sisters." American premiere of a Swedish/South African documentary about women's struggles against apartheid. This is the only festival screening.

9:30 p.m. - "Sekal Must Die." Czechoslovakia's entry in this year's Oscar race for best foreign film. The title character is a sadistic landowner who becomes a target for assassination during the Nazi occupation.

Pacific Place

5 p.m. - "Expect the Unexpected." Hong Kong thriller about gangsters who try to upstage a burglary.

7:15 p.m. - "The Interview." Craig Monahan's absorbing Australian thriller, starring Hugo Weaving as a man accused of an unnamed crime. Winner of the most recent Australian Film Awards for best picture, actor and screenplay, it starts out as a Kafkaesque thriller (it's almost a remake of "The Trial"), then takes a most unexpected turn.

9:30 p.m. - "The Red Violin." This prize-winning Canadian film could just as easily be called "The Curse of the Red Violin." As it passes from owner to owner over the centuries, the rare and pricey instrument rarely makes its owners happy. Jason Flemying, Greta Scacchi and Samuel L. Jackson co-star.

Broadway Performance Hall

5 p.m. - "The Wounds." Yugoslavian box-office hit about teenage drug addicts who become influential in Belgrade's criminal underworld. Compared to "Trainspotting," it was directed by Srdjan Dragojevic, who made the memorable "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame."

7:15 p.m. - "Happy Birthday, Dr. Mograbi." American premiere of an Israeli film about a Palestinian producer who hires an Israeli filmmaker. He wants to create a documentary about villages abandoned by the Palestinians in 1948.

9:30 p.m. - "Elvjs & Merilijn." Italian story of a Bulgarian Elvis impersonator and a Romanian Marilyn Monroe look-alike. They're brought together by a talent-contest prize that takes them to an Adriatic coastal resort.