Nicole Holofcener's smart, acidic comedy "Lovely and Amazing" zeroes in on contemporary narcissism and its fallout with a relentless, needling accuracy that illustrates exactly the way some people allow their personal insecurities and tics to poison their intimate relationships.

Patrice Leconte's "My Best Friend," not in the competition, is a smart, acidic French comedy about the meaning of friendship in which a successful art dealer, realizing he has no close friends, hires a garrulous taxi driver to teach him sociability.

The acidic comedy observes the prenuptial panic of Carlo (Stefano Accorsi) with the approaching formalization of his live-in relationship with his histrionically possessive girlfriend, Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno).

Curmudgeons have Real Art Ways to thank for presenting this evening of acidic comedy.

ALSO OF NOTE - Ricky Gervais is an exquisitely awful boss in "The Office," Mr. Gervais's acidic and quietly outrageous comedy, set in a gloomy British paper company.

Scott Elliott, director of the Roundabout Theater Company revival of Clare Boothe Luce's acidic comedy "The Women," said that he, too, had been taken aback in early previews at the intensity of the audience's laughter.

Jörg Immendorff, a German painter best known for crowded scenes depicting an acidic, often autobiographical comedy of art, politics and history, died on Monday at his home in Düsseldorf.

Wednesday's offering at 8:15 P.M. is an acidic comedy called "The Smell of the Kill," by Michelle Lowe, in which three women at a dinner party, tired of their inattentive husbands, flip a coin to decide what dire fate will befall the men.

This acidic comedy, one of the hits of the 1998 New Directors/New Films series, goes to some of the places visited by movies like "Happiness" and "American Beauty."