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This remark, tossed aside by the characters, is emblematic of the ironies from which Touch derives its significance: It is a modestly self-conscious confession from the filmmaker that the audience is watching a fiction.

But forget that for a moment. What is really interesting about this statement, as delivered by Arnold, and the film itself, is that it is hilarious.

Touch is based upon a novel by Elmore Leonard, the sardonic scribe of last year's Get Shorty , which was probably John Travolta's most interesting detour along the road from Pulp Fiction' s hip attitude to Michael 's overbearing righteousness.

Actually, Touch , like Michael , deals with holy matter: It is about a man who has the power to perform miracles. The foxy Skeet Ulrich (who recently played the insane boyfriend in Scream ) stars as Juvenal, a onetime Franciscan priest and Brazilian missionary who heals people by touching them. As always in Leonard's world, his abilities attract a great deal of attention from a host of eccentric hustlers with all sorts of plans for him.

Among these are Bill Hill (Christopher Walken), a former evangelist turned Winnebago-salesman; August Murray (Arnold), a hard-core conservative Catholic who wants the Church to restore the Latin Mass; and Kathy Worthington (played by the irresistibly sly Janeane Garofalo), a newspaper reporter who wants to make Juvenal her big break.

While Hill wants to milk Juvenal's freak value by cutting book and record deals, Murray sees the "Miracle Worker of the Amazon" as a way to publicize his cause.

Meanwhile, Juvenal goes about his work as a counselor in an alcohol-abuse clinic, occasionally preaching, occasionally healing and occasionally bleeding from mystical stigmatic wounds.

When Juvenal heals a young leukemia patient whose mother (Lolita Davidovich) is a stripper, reporters lured by Murray catch the scene on film. Debra Lusanne(Gina Gershon), a tabloid television reporter, finds the story interesting and gets involved.

Then there is Bridget Fonda as Lynn, a former baton twirler in Hill's evangelist act who works as a record promoter. Hill goes to Lynn's boss Artie (Paul Mazursky) to cut a record deal for the newly famous Juvenal.

While all this is going on, Lynn falls in love with Juvenal. Don't you find it a bit strange for a potential saint to be sleeping with a record promoter?

At his point, I was having a hard time just keeping up with the plot twists.

Nevertheless, Schrader manages to juggle all the oddball characters and still retain the punchy feel of Leonard's thickly ironic dialogue. As in Get Shorty , the humor in Touch comes from the perfect phrasing of Leonard's words. It would be very easy for a director to screw them up.

But Schrader wisely retained much of the author's text and focuses most intensely on the casual and sordid interactions of his characters, rather than the gratuitous details of the plot. What emerges from the screen is an acerbic and thoughtful essay on several aspects of our society: fame, faith, love and sex.

Have we not had enough movies about angels, preachers and con artists? Sure. But Touch edges into some new territory, engages a bit of intellect and is very funny.

The movie is definitely worth checking out.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 28, 1997 issue.