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By Bridget Cowan

Seedy sex, football corruption and brilliant photography are winning elements in Chile's latest film, "Historias de Futbol," directed by Chilean Andres Wood.

The film takes place in 1982, when Chile was entering a harsh recession after nearly a decade under the military government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Three short films - set in Santiago, Calama and Chiloe - are rolled into one to tell tales of the crimes of passion induced by football, Chile's undisputed national pastime.

Downtown Santiago: a $30,000 bribe and an irresistible goal later, a failed football star finds out that his stubble-faced, pot-bellied manager really did mean what he said about "no goals."

Nifty flashbacks weave the erstwhile star's story together, from a winning header on the field to the ensuing back street brawl, the deal going down in the big boss's snooker hall office, then a trip to the hospital. Snapshots of the footballer's life let his true colors show through as he celebrates with prostitutes and lies to his girlfriend. His painful ending may simply be his just desserts.

But whether you empathize with the character or detest him, you can appreciate an ending which spares both excessive violence and a football overdose. In their place is a well-developed short story which holds the attention of even the most avid anti-football fan.

This second vignette depicts a tough life, but one which the young protagonists face happily as only nine-year-olds can, seeming not to mind that they are poor.

The section begins with a boy sitting in a bare room, dining on a Vienna sausage and a spoonful of rice. His mother stands up, kisses her precious print of the Last Supper goodbye, and hands it to her son to pawn for food money.

Out under a huge, blue sky on the dry, scorched dirt tracks of Calama, the boy and his pals re-enact their hero's headers as they listen to the whoops and cheers coming from the Chile versus Brazil match - they can't scrape the pesos together to go and see the game.

The boys' luck turns up, however, when an over-enthusiastic kick knocks the match ball out of the stadium and into the midst of the five friends stranded outside the walls.

The first boy wins the ball fair and square in a burping contest, and happily shares it in a scrimmage with his buddies. But luck here is fleeting.

Pulling on his shirt, the boy realizes the 10 dollars he got for the Last Supper are no longer in the breast pocket. It was their only money, and there is nothing left to sell - except his prize.

Hard decisions brought about by poverty bring an immediate vitality to the characters, as well as leaving a delicate sadness which haunts the film. It is the bizarre result of mixing together Catholicism, isolation and dictatorship, and then throwing in a good dollop of pioneer spirit. The boy just gets on with life; it's not the first young dream to have been shelved simply because the plata is not available, and it certainly won't be the last.

The boy heads back home at sunset, his crestfallen face hanging into his chest, and one remaining friend consoles him with a pat on the back.

The third film is set on the island of Chiloe, with all its sexual, technological and cultural frustrations. A Santiaguino stud in his snugly fitting Levi's clambers up onto the roof in the lashing wind and rain to readjust the antenna. Two Chilote spinster sisters look on, admiring his prowess and determination to see Chile in an international match. He sorts out the technical hiccup, only to tumble from the tiles into the arms of one of the sisters, who has already thought to hide her Catholic cross.

The two end up in bed together, but the man's football mania is unquenched - he feels compelled to peep at the climax of the match through the crack in the bedroom door. The television is surrounded by male Chilotes too engrossed to realize that the "trauco" (a mythical dwarf which is said to impregnate unmarried women on Chiloe) over from "the continent" has arrived and is leaving his mark.

Women don't fare too well in any of the three films, although this is not surprising given the manly football theme. Frustrated, desperate, confused or nonchalant, these women are stop-gaps in-between the real business of male-bonding and football. They run from the nervous, giggling girlfriend who desperately loves her boyfriend as he wanders in from a visit to the local prostitute, to the superbly stony-faced Chilote sister who only after a home-brew and curanto session dares to flirtatiously unbutton her prim, high-collared, black shirt. The men do not fare that well either - they just get more time on screen to show how useless they are.

The underlying charm of this film lies in the omnipresent climatic and cultural contrasts, played through with gentle humor and spectacular lighting. From the scorching northern desert to the lush wetness of Chiloe, from the gangster mentality of Santiago to simple life in the country. Not one is regarded as any better or any worse; each of these Chilean realities is shown in equally unadulterated form through the eyes of Chilean director Wood. There is a beauty in all this ugliness which is definitely worth a trip to the cinema.

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