p.s.

[] (Two stars)

Hard to swallow. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (sex, profanity). At the Empire and the Angelika.

LAURA Linney gives a lovely performance in “p.s.” as a love-starved Columbia University admissions officer who falls for a much-younger M.F.A. applicant (Topher Grace) – but flawless work by the two actors can’t quite save this mushy, chick-lit fantasy.

Dylan Kidd, who directed the wonderfully misanthropic “Roger Dodger,” goes too far in the other direction with this estrogen-drenched reincarnation yarn, which might have worked better as a madcap farce (though the same basic plot didn’t in “Chances Are,” which featured Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey Jr. as unlikely lovers).

Instead, Kidd treats Helen Schulman’s novel in a relatively naturalistic fashion, which makes it hard to accept the notion that Linney’s 39-year-old Louise would instantly flip for 20-year-old F. Scott Feinstadt (Grace) because he shares the name and the face of a teenage boyfriend who died in a car accident.

“I’m really digging this executive recruitment thing,” F. Scott enthusiastically proclaims after Louise takes him home after their first meeting – and she seduces him into some hot and heavy sex.

Crisp line readings by Grace, a regular on TV’s “That ’70s Show,” nicely complement Linney’s patented romantic yearning, but in the final analysis, Grace’s F. Scott is a cipher who exists, like all of the other characters, only to elicit an emotional response from Louise.

Another shadowy man in Louise’s life is her best friend, Peter (Gabriel Byrne), an astronomer and her ex-husband of 10 years, who greets F. Scott’s arrival by casually announcing to Louise that he is a sex addict who took on all comers during their marriage.

Equally vague and repellent is Louise’s brother Sammy (Paul Rudd), a recovering drug addict and sometimes sex partner of her ex-husband.

But the hardest to take is Louise’s ex-friend Missy (Marcia Gay Harden in bosom-heaving, scenery-chewing mode), who stole the original F. Scott from Louise.

The screenplay by Kidd and Schulman would have you believe that immediately after Louise meets F. Scott, (1) she contacts Missy for the first time in 20 years to break the news and (2) Missy rushes to New York to try to seduce the new F. Scott.

All movies require suspension of disbelief to a certain degree, but “p.s.” really pushes the envelope.