Bright and eager, bouncy and buoyant, sharp-eyed and quick-eared and passionately in love--those are a few of the ways you could describe Calle 54, director Fernando Trueba's tribute to a dozen Latin-jazz stars of three generations. Among them: Chico O'Farrill, Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Tito Puente, Chucho and Bebo Valdes, Paquito D'Rivera and Jerry and Andy Gonzalez.

The result is a catchy, discerning performance film about Latin jazz, one sure to be numbered among the few outstanding movies about music, with Dolby Surround sound to die for.

The 46-year-old Spanish director has a long and interestingly twisty oeuvre. The Year of the Awakening (1986) followed a Spanish boy's discovery of sex with a nurse in a sanitarium. Belle Époque (1992) copped an Oscar for its bawdy picaresque tale of pre-Franco Spain, where a young pacifist army deserter finds refuge with a wealthy man and his four voluptuous and seductive daughters. Two Much/Loco de Amor (1996) starred Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith and Daryl Hannah in an updated screwball comedy where con man Banderas beds both women by pretending to be two different men; the film got a lot of attention because of the off-camera sparks between Banderas and Griffith.

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