The package gambit is such a familiar Hollywood standby that "Green Card" has fun employing it as an alibi. The main characters - a Frenchman and an American woman who have to pretend their marriage is the real thing - solemnly explain to an immigration official that they met when they ran into each other, their packages fell to the ground, etc.

Actually the whole movie is a slightly more sophisticated application of the same formula. The Frenchman, played by Gerard Depardieu, needs a green card if he is to stay in America. The woman, played by Andie MacDowell, needs a husband if she is to rent a desirable Manhattan apartment. They are introduced by a friend, they go through the fiction of a marriage ceremony, and then when immigration comes sniffing around they have to put on a convincing show of really being married.

A movie like "Green Card" can supply two kinds of pleasures: those caused when it observes its formula, and those created when it violates it. The movie was written and directed by Peter Weir ("Dead Poets Society," "Witness"), who constructs it lovingly according to sturdy old principles: The couple is at first indifferent to one another, then hostile, then in love, then in denial, and then of course they break up - right before they get together. All of these stops are observed, but at the same time Weir has added some nice touches, including the unconventional characters themselves.

Depardieu, the leading actor in France, here making his American film debut, is a large, shaggy, untidy man who brings to every role a kind of effortless charm. He occupies a considerable psychic space on the screen. It is not hard to figure out his practical reasons for wanting to marry MacDowell. But her character has its work cut out: Would an attractive young woman, smart and with a great job, actually marry a stranger just to get an apartment? In Manhattan, this movie argues, the answer is yes - especially if the apartment incorporates a large solarium. We accept the marriage of convenience for the purposes of the plot, but the screenplay still has some explaining to do.

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