BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

The technical artistry displayed throughout "Atonement" makes up for a certain lack of emotional engagement.

That sounds like a backhanded compliment but it isn't meant to be. Nor is it meant to imply that some viewers of this classy English love tragedy, with its lush 1930s manor house and dire World War II settings, won't leave the theater sniffling wrecks.

It's simply that others will be just as legitimately less moved.

That's partly because, for all of its dazzling formal trickery and late in the game twist, Ian McEwan's acclaimed source novel didn't tell all that unique a tale. And only one of the film's principals exhibits the personality quirks and psychological complications that make a movie character indelible (and she's played, though quite brilliantly all around, by three different actors).

That stuff noted, the movie's adapters, "Dangerous Liaisons" screenwriter Christopher Hampton and "Pride & Prejudice" director Joe Wright, deserve high praise for not turning a fine literary novel into a soupy, picturesque wartime romance, the fate that more or less befell Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient."

Typewriter keys clack as the exuberant creative energy of a 13-year-old girl ricochets through the polished wood corridors of a large country mansion. It's the hottest day of the 1935 summer, and Briony Tallis (Irish actress Saoirse Ronan at this stage) is having nothing but trouble making everybody behave properly. And the heat seems to have made her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) act even more beastly than usual.

Especially when Cecilia's around Robbie Turner ("Last King of Scotland's" James

McAvoy), the brainy son of the family housekeeper, whom the Tallis' gave a Cambridge education. In this literal hothouse atmosphere, Cecilia and Robbie appear to have an awful row, then he does something terrible to her in the library. At least, that's what Briony, who of course has a barely understood crush on Robbie, thinks. Skillfully edited, repeated scenes give us a better picture of what's going on. But we keep hearing that typewriter for a number of reasons, all of which will have a devastating impact on the three main characters' lives.

Jump some years ahead, teenage Briony, now played by Romola Garai, makes her way to the military hospitals of London and spends the rest of the movie virtually trying to atone for what she did to Robbie and her sister. This effort takes a few weird turns, explained and exemplified by Vanessa Redgrave's brief but powerful appearance at movie's end, which lends the sometimes jumpy narrative and limited character development that came before it greater, more satisfying logic.

Which doesn't sound all that emotionally sweeping, I guess. But if you appreciate rigorous cinematic artistry along with your transcendent romance, you may just find the whole package heartrending.

Bob Strauss, (818) 713-3670 bob.strauss@dailynews.com

ATONEMENT

>R: sex, violence, children in jeopardy, language.
>Starring: James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Romola Garai, Saoirse Ronan, Vanessa Redgrave.
>Director: Joe Wright.
>Running time: 2 hr. 3 min.
>Playing: ArcLight Galleria, Sherman Oaks; ArcLight, Hollywood; Landmark, West L.A.
>In a nutshell: Formally impressive adaptation of Ian McEwan's erotically charged treachery and regret novel is just a shade less devastating than it strives to be.