Maelstrom

''Maelstrom'' is probably the first romantic drama ever narrated by a smelly dead fish. What might a dead fish have to do with love? It has something to do with the ocean whence life springs. And as it turns out, fish figure prominently in the symbolic structure of this fine French Canadian film, written and directed by Denis Villeneuve. Its protagonist, Bibi Champagne (Marie-Josée Croze), is a beautiful and successful 25-year-old businesswoman. Virtually overnight, Bibi's sleek yuppie existence unravels, and she faces an acute spiritual crisis when she has a series of personal disasters.

Commenting on her travails, the craggy-voiced fish (Pierre Lebeau), the movie's philosophical voice, periodically punctuates the soundtrack of a movie whose strategy is to surprise us by taking abrupt surreal sidetracks. At one point in the story, when a character in a restaurant complains about the toughness of her octopus, the film goes on a wild tangent as the waiter complains to the cook who in turn calls his supplier, and we follow the path the octopus took to reach her plate.

As weird as it may sound, the movie's aquatic fixation is integral to its concept. For above and beyond telling a story, ''Maelstrom'' is a meditation on the disconnection between the glossy surfaces of high-end urban existence and the life-and-death realities they camouflage. The opening scene finds Bibi undergoing an abortion. The procedure is carried out with such a cool, clinical dispassion that she doesn't see what is removed from inside her, which is taken away and immediately incinerated.

Afterward Bibi, feeling desolate, is comforted by her best friend, Claire (Stephanie Morgenstern), who has had three abortions and who advises Bibi to ''de-dramatize'' what has just happened. Bibi's composure further unravels when her brother -- who employs her in a business importing high-priced boutique items from Sumatra -- fires her for losing $200,000 in a transaction. We also learn that Bibi's mother, now dead, is a legend in the fashion world. A glossy magazine called L'Avenir (The Future) interviews Bibi and photographs her posing as her mother for a cover story.

The final blow comes when Bibi, preoccupied with her problems, strikes a pedestrian while driving and blithely leaves the scene of the accident. Later she learns from the newspaper that the victim, a Norwegian immigrant who worked as a fishmonger, has died. Guilt-stricken and terrified, she drives her car off a pier in an act that's both penance and an attempt to erase any evidence.

For all the modern anomie that ''Maelstrom'' evokes, the movie insists there is a hidden connection between things. And when Bibi meets the dead man's son, Evian (Jean-Nicolas Verreault), a handsome frogman, their anguished tango recalls the dance of Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry in ''Monster's Ball.''

''Maelstrom'' is a deliberately unsteady mixture of stylistic elements. Some, like the recurrent images of turbulent water foaming at the bottom of the screen, are abstract. Others, like the abortion, are clinical. The talking fish chopped up by a blood-spattered fishmonger is Dadaist, while the swooning images of sunsets over water and the love scenes are intensely romantic.

The soundtrack also varies from the Dadaist (Tom Waits growling a lyric about drowning in the ocean) to the romantic (Edvard Grieg). Not all the selections are well advised. ''Good Morning, Starshine'' from ''Hair,'' which recurs as a perky upbeat palliative, sounds annoyingly tinny and ends the movie on a shallow note.

What's sacrificed by the conceptual audacity is a sharp sense of character. Ms. Croze's Bibi never really transcends the stereotype of a yuppie cold fish (if you will), and the details of her family history remain frustratingly sketchy. But the film's iconoclastic mixture of elements is still a courageous attempt to ambush us by tearing through the surfaces of Bibi's life to conjure the gnarly essence of what lies beneath.