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PREDICTION: I Sent A Letter to My Love will show at the Orson Welles for months. It is that type of film--unambitious, unchallenging, very pretty and quite small. Though it succeeds nicely, it puts on few airs, simply because it has no cause to. Designed as a vehicle for Simone Signoret (best known recently for Madame Rosa); this is the story of an aging spinster who lives with, and cares for, her wheelchair-bound brother, Gilles. Grouchy, though affectionate toward each other, their life seems as cold and sterile as the craggy Brittany coastline that Gilles (Jean Rochefort) perpetually watches through his telescope.

As loneliness crowds in on her, the matronly Louise (Signoret) places an anonymous ad in the local paper seeking a companion. There is only a single answer; it comes of course, from Gilles, the brother never suspecting he is writing to his sister. Their correspondence soon goes past the superficial ("I imagine my head on your breasts," Gilles writes in his second letter), and this secret sexual awakening, set against the innocent sister-brother (in some ways more like mother-son) relationship of Gilles and Louise, is the single intriguing theme of the movie.

This is a set piece, a still life, but understatement--and a raging epidemic of meaningful glances and message-laden smiles--fetter the film badly. When Gilles half-rapes a visitor, the activity is more jarring, more painful to watch, than the plot warrants, simply because it contrasts so sharply with the general torpor. Only one scene is triumphant--when Louise and family friend Yvette (the wonderful Delphine Seyrig, of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) don slacks for the first time and model them for Gilles, and though it is the opposite of physical flesh-baring, it causes a glee symbolic of the liberation they are going through, and it means just as much as does their new found delight in the cliffs and beaches that surround their home.

But Letter (incidentally, a horrendous title for a movie billed on Paris marquees as Cher Inconnu) won't face up to the question at its center. It ends with Gilles decision to marry Yvette; we can only guess what Louise, whose loneliness sparked the plot and whose carnal rebirth has been its main feature, will do. Perhaps she continues her quest, and perhaps she resigns herself to spinsterhood, but that--and not the conventional peace that Gilles makes with the world--should be the focus of the film.

Only cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet pulls off anything exceptional, though, admittedly, he has a lot to work with. His camera roves up and down the rocky shores, and there are scenes that would fit spectacularly in a National Geographic special. And in the mossy, dark house, he plays with light and shadow, angle and object, to striking effect.

Cloquet is the only one reaching, though. The acting, the writing and the direction break no new ground, and provoke little thought. Sentimental and airy. I Sent a Letter to My Love is more posicard than epistle, asking little of the sender, and demanding little from the recipient. Is is just the sort of gossamer summery flick that may challenge The Last Metro for top spot at the Welles.