EROTIC TALES

Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (sex, nudity). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

IN 1996, Germany’s state- funded TV network commissioned 12 international directors to each come up with a short film about sex and love.

The concept proved so popular that additional films were commissioned for subsequent seasons.

Now, three of the 30-minute shorts have been collected under the title “Erotic Tales” for presentation on the big screen.

Just why is a mystery.

Only one – “The Waiting Room” (1996), by Dutch helmer Jos Stelling – is even remotely worthy of a theatrical airing.

Stelling, who directed a stunning feature called “The Pointsman” in 1986, sets his no-dialogue short in a train station in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

An ordinary-looking guy in suit, tie and raincoat has an erotic encounter (possibly real, possibly imaginary) with a beautiful model while his wife is off getting coffee.

The two other shorts are best left to television.

Susan Seidelman’s “The Dutch Master” (1995) features a then-unknown Mira Sorvino as a nice Italian girl from Brooklyn who falls for a hunky young man in a painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

And Amos Kollek’s “Angela” (2000) concerns a lonely, soon-to-turn-70 Manhattan retiree whose life takes a turn for the better when he accidentally meets an S&M hooker.

With so many worthy movies being made in Europe, it’s a crime that something as mediocre as “Erotic Tales” gets a release here.