When director Milos Forman (Amadeus, Ragtime) set about polishing a repehensible sleazemonger into an endearing free-speech hero in The People vs. Larry Flynt, he also afforded another infamous figure the chance to improve a nasty reputation.

To the public mind, Courtney Love of Hole is alternative rock's bad girl. Only Roseanne gets more consistently scabrous and malicious press than this inflammatory loudmouth. But risks are her buisness, and so, in a career move comparable to stage-diving in a short dress, Love cast her cinematic lot with Althea Leasure - the stripper who married Larry Flynt, ran Hustler magazine during his jail time, and finally drowned in a tub, an HIV-infected drug addict.

Though the role is more of a stretch than, say, playing a rowdy rock singer, the similarities between Love - a onetime stripper, ex-heroin user, and the widow of Kurt Cobain - are obvious; and Love does slip smoothly into the skin of this assertive, outrageous woman devoted to an equally unconventional mate. She looks great in Althea's salad days - all big, bright eyes, plush mouth, and trim figure - and goes luminously to hell at the end. While Forman pursues his entertaining but blinkered agenda of paining Flynt (Woody Harrelson) as a victimized reprobate, Love flashes an exhilarating personal victory from the narrow straits separating her and the role. She emerges a disciplined, talented pro able to hold her own (despise a wavering regional accent) in the skilled company of Oscar nominees Harrelson and Edward Norton (as Flynt's long-suffering attourney).

Love got a Golden Globe nomination for Flynt but as yet has made no plans to act again. Next she should expand her dramatic scope and submerge herself in a less likely role.