'The loss of imagination is deadly'

Admirers of Peter Pan from J. M. Barrie's novel, rather than from the many stage and screen versions, will find a kindred spirit in P. J. Hogan, the Australian director whose film adaptation of the book opens nationwide today.

Hogan's previous movies Muriel's Wedding and My Best Friend's Wedding do not at first glance seem to be the work of a filmmaker drawn to the spectacle and enchantment of modern children's entertainment.

But the sharp, sometimes stinging emotional acuity he demonstrated in those spiky, heartfelt comedies makes him an ideal interpreter of Barrie's work. The Peter Pan books are intended to disturb as well as comfort; in seducing young readers into the pleasures of literature they also teach them to appreciate various forms of unhappiness. They are magical and exciting, but also frightening and sad; their beautifully balanced themes are the delights of childhood and the pathos of leaving it behind.

Hogan understands both themes, and his filmmaking style is a perfect mixture of wide-eyed wonder and slightly melancholy sophistication. While Peter, played by 14-year-old Jeremy Sumpter, is appropriately dashing and adventurous, and Tink (Ludivine Sagnier) is as cute and naughty as anyone could wish, the movie belongs to Rachel Hurd-Wood's Wendy Darling.

Hurd-Wood, a 13-year-old British actress making her professional debut, was born for the role, which calls on her to be a precocious child, an action heroine, the surrogate mother of a tribe of Lost Boys and the romantic lead. Her soft, sensitive features display her childlike eagerness and her incipient wisdom without overdoing either trait, and she and Sumpter remind us that Peter Pan, beyond all the swashbuckling and fantasy, is a love story, which ends on a poignant Jamesian note of

renunciation.

That aspect of the movie may bring a lump to adult throats, but in the meantime there are the sturdy delights of swordplay, Neverland ritual and flight.

You also feel the grief of Mrs. Darling (Olivia Williams) as she pines beside an open window for her vanished children, and the loneliness of Peter. All of this feeling is a mark of just how thoroughly Hogan has succeeded in evading the sentimentality that infects so many recent children's movies.

Imagination is dangerous, but the loss of imagination is deadly. Being a child is frightening -- there are certainly scenes here that will jolt the sensitivities of young children -- but growing up is painful. Like Barrie, Hogan grasps these difficult truths and knows how to spin them into utter, uncomplicated delight.