At Home in Ambrosia

Billy Liar. Thousands cheer. Victorious in battle, laden with decorations for heroism, the beloved dictator smiles. He raises his arm in a smart, left-handed salute. Suddenly his mother begins banging a spoon against the banister downstairs: "Hey, your boiled egg is stone-cold." All right, luv. He goes to breakfast, gets ready for work, listens to Mum, Dad and Granny whining platitudes until he turns from his shaving mirror just long enough to mow them down with a tommy gun.

The dictator is Billy Liar, hero of a tragicomic fantasy that squeaks out a success by using its essentially hackneyed humor to freshen up what might have been merely another grim study of working-class life in the industrial cities of England. To make this world bearable, Billy embroiders it with fantasies, one of which encompasses a swell little totalitarian state known as Ambrosia. It is well worth a visit, largely because the acting is unbeatable.

As Billy, Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner] seems the apotheosis of misspent youth. Director John Schlesinger often takes fancy too literally, weighing it down with sets and costumes, and Courtenay's hectic inner life is hilarious all by itself. The movie soars when he tosses an imaginary hand grenade as the ultimate solution of some minor social disgrace. When he lolls around his boss's office practicing a speech of resignation, Courtenay steers an unpredictable course from Churchill imita tions to doubletalk to mere gibberish, and brings off moments of pluperfect screen comedy.

Real objects and real people are enigmas to Billy. He loathes his job at Shadrack and Duxbury, an undertaking firm. He yearns to go off to London and become a scriptwriter before Mr. Shad-rack closes in on him about the postage money he has pilfered. Girls are a problem too. He is engaged to Rita and Barbara, but loves his beatnik playmate Liz, portrayed by Julie Christie, an actress so brimful of careless charm that she parlays a few brief scenes into instant stardom.

Liz knows the truth about Billy Liar. Escaping to London is a snap, she says. "You just buy a ticket and get on a train--that's all you do." In a bitter climax, laughter gives way to self-knowledge, to quiet defeat. While Liz heads for London alone, Billy saunters back toward the cold but certain comforts of home--and the loyal troops of Ambrosia fall into step behind him.

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