Love Crimes (1992)

Some viewers will undoubtedly have an overwhelming urge to keep pressing their rewind buttons when Sean Young gets spanked. And some won't be able to stifle the thought that for her performance in this wimpy psychological thriller, she deserves it. In Love Crimes, an ostensible suspense film, released in both R and unrated versions on video, Young plays an Atlanta prosecutor determined to nab Patrick Bergin, who has been sexually duping women, but falls prey to her own sexual fantasies instead.

Director Lizzie Borden (Working Girls) is much more successful at exploring the gray area between sexual abuse and erotic fantasy than at crafting a tightly wound drama. The unrated version, which adds about seven minutes of so-called ''sizzling'' footage, makes more dramatic sense than the R version. But erotically speaking, those seven minutes are just more of the same lame would-be soft-core porn that video companies are increasingly foisting on cassette renters. C-