If there's one thing I've learned regarding the Spanish Inquisition, it's that nobody expects it (thanks a lot, Monty Python!). But what I also didn't foresee is that a legendary director and an acclaimed cast could so thoroughly botch a film on the subject, Europe's creepy cousin to our Salem witch trials and alcoholic uncle to its very own Holocaust. "Goya's Ghosts" is the latest from Milos Forman, the Academy Award-winning Czech responsible for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus," "The People vs. Larry Flynt" - you get the idea. Forman clearly knows how to make a movie, which makes this misfire so puzzling.

Initially set in 1792 Madrid, toward the close of the Roman Catholic Church's bloody campaign against non-believers, "Goya's Ghosts" stars sleepy-eyed Javier Bardem (Oscar nominee for "The Sea Inside") as Lorenzo, a monk who we meet as he's defending to his fellow men of the cloth the blasphemous etchings of Francisco Goya (a miscast Stellan Skarsgard) as "the true face of the world." But Lorenzo's laissez-faire attitude seems to end with this artist currently laboring over the monk's portrait, for in the next breath he's encouraging a return to the "old ways," meaning the more ligament-ripping methods of sussing out the supposed heretics.

Enter Ines (the perpetually overpraised Natalie Portman), one of Goya's models and the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Her public distaste for roast piglet leads church spies to conclude "Judaizer," which she freely admits to after being "put to the Question" (read: tortured by priests). Then some unsurprising stuff happens, 15 years pass, and Goya is deaf, Lorenzo is a powerful operative for the attacking Napoleon, while Ines is warped, physically and mentally, and looking for the daughter she birthed during her decade and a half in the church dungeon. Comeuppance abounds, though satisfaction, oddly, does not.

Despite a globular face like a loaf of monkey bread, Bardem possesses a curious allure, his compulsive watchability unaffected by his repugnant role as he puts the dull Skarsgard and hammy Portman (she also plays Ines's toothy daughter) in their places. "Goya's Ghosts" is gorgeously filmed, opulence alternating with squalor and illuminated as though by candlelight. A meditation on self-expression, madness, and power is something Forman should be able to direct in his sleep, but the script (by Forman and one-time Buñuel crony Jean-Claude Carrière) refuses to linger on any of those concepts, instead trying to tell many stories while ultimately conveying nothing. Truthfully, Forman's flawed judgment could be summed up in seven words: Randy Quaid as the King of Spain.

By the third act, when Napoleon makes the Iberian peninsula howl, the inability of "Goya's Ghosts" to find a significant focus outweighs any of its meager virtues. It staggers between cursory study of art, sledgehammer soap opera, ambitious historical epic, dessert topping - uh-oh. Maybe "Goya's Ghosts" has very little to do with the actual Spanish Inquisition after all! It's probably yet another of those oblique metaphors on the present American climate of intolerance, insulation, and invasion. Why can't movies ever be about what they're about? Symbolism makes my thinking thingy hurt.

The most recent film by celebrated filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira is "Belle Toujours," an arguably unnecessary follow-up to Luis Buñuel's 1967 classic "Belle de Jour." Written and directed by the Portuguese nonagenarian, "Belle Toujours" envisions major players from "Belle de Jour" some 40 years removed from the events of its source material, with Husson (Michel Piccoli reprises his role), now nostalgic, well-to-do, and numb, once again obsessed with former prostitute Séverine (Bulle Ogier, distractingly not Catherine Deneuve) after spotting her in a crowd.

The first part of "Belle Toujours" finds Husson recounting for a bartender (and for us) the story of "Belle de Jour" over free-flowing whiskey, while the second half stages the long-awaited meeting between Séverine and Husson, her looking for answers and him seeking a bit of revenge. This is a sparse film even at 70 minutes, with long stretches of silence filling the spaces between self-conscious acting from all excepting Piccoli. There are some intriguing notions to be had in "Belle Toujours," one-time Buñuel disciple de Oliveira's homage to the wicked surrealist, as well as closure of sorts. It takes a certain hubris for a director to make a sequel to another auteur's signature work, but at 98 years old, one likely feels somewhat bulletproof.

"Goya's Ghosts"

(R), DIRECTED BY MILOS FORMAN

OPENS FRIDAY AT THE LITTLE

"Belle Toujours"

(NR), DIRECTED BY MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA

SATURDAY 9 P.M., SUNDAY 7 P.M. AT DRYDEN THEATRE