A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES (1998)

A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES (R) This Merchant Ivory adaptation of a novel by Kaylie Jones (the daughter of novelist James Jones) is suffused with a rarefied emotional glow, yet it's also tentative, rambling, and maddeningly shapeless. Kris Kristofferson gives a gruffly witty performance as Bill Willis, a celebrated novelist and World War II veteran living with his family in '60s Paris. Channe, the Willises' daughter (played at different ages by Luisa Conlon and Leelee Sobieski), is a classic ''difficult'' overachiever -- beautiful, gifted, teeming with growing pains. At times, we seem to be watching bits and pieces of a half-dozen coming-of-age films. A Soldier's Daugh- ter Never Cries is frustrating because you can see the film it wants to be poking out from the misfire it is. C

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