Paris

James Ivory's many gifts as a filmmaker include an uncanny ability to reach deep inside the hearts and souls of outsiders. He usually looks for such characters in novels of stature and lineage. For A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, Ivory turns to a humbler source than Henry James or E.M. Forster - an autobiographical novel published in 1990 by Kaylie Jones, the daughter of novelist James Jones. While the movie may not rank as a classic film drawn from a classic - like A Room With a View or Howards End - it is a strong, captivating and intimate portrait of the tensions and rewards of life in a contentious family.

P ARIS HILTON has worked things out with her pornographer ex-boyfriend, Rick Salomon. According to Rush & Molloy in the New York Daily News, the shame Salomon has brought to the otherwise shameless Paris has reportedly cost him more than $400,000 plus a share of "One Night in Paris" profits. Paris will donate a chunk of the money to charity. In return, Rick has dropped his suit claiming Paris and her peeps defamed him. As if you could defame a guy who sold your private sex tapes.

A jumble of colors and textures called to me from the flea-market stall. After months of planning a trip to France with my sister, we were in the March? aux Puces de St-Ouen, on the outskirts of Paris. Being a flea-market devotee, my journeying to this large market was a must. And so, my sister and I emerged from the Metro stop early on a Saturday morning into a somewhat gritty, workaday neighborhood. We followed directions in my guidebook. We walked through a gloomy underpass and traversed several blocks, ignoring over-eager vendors with stalls on the market's outskirts, bypassing the lure of knockoff sneakers and Japanese electronics.

My Life and Times With Antonin Artaud is an affectionately brooding glimpse into the psyche of the despair-driven French poet, playwright and surrealist thinker, as observed by an almost-as-tortured friend, fellow poet and drug supplier, the fictional Jacques Prevel. It is also movie-as-secondhand-smoke: So many Gauloises are lit up, sucked in and exhaled - dramatically, doomily - in Gerard Mordillat's black-and-white biography that you can practically smell the nicotine clinging to your clothes as the final credits roll.

Night and Day, from the inventive Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, is a minor-key, minimalist homage to Francois Truffaut's triangular classic, Jules and Jim. A boy-meets-girl-meets-another-boy love story set in a low-end Paris, the film is quiet, elliptical and sparked by the presence of three unusual young stars. As Julie, Akerman's earthy heroine, Guilaine Londez exudes a dusky radiance. Round and big-bodied, with thick black hair and a gamine smile, Julie wanders the streets of nighttime Paris emitting a vibrant glow - as if she had headlights for eyes.

Paris is being mean to Lady Gaga . In October, the pop diva's concerts there were postponed amid nationwide strikes over a government plan to raise the retirement age. Then on Sunday, the first of two rescheduled shows was snowed out when the 28 vehicles carrying Gaga's sets and equipment were barred from the roads because of hazardous conditions. "I am furious and devastated," Gaga tweeted, adding that it was "unfair to my fans and to me. " Paris promised to be nice for shows Monday and (twice rescheduled)

A bomb blew up in a crowded waiting room at police headquarters here yesterday, killing one person and injuring 51 in the fourth bombing in Paris within a week. The explosion appeared to be part of a continuing campaign by Middle East terrorists to hold the city of Paris hostage in an attempt to win the release of three imprisoned comrades. It also took place less than 24 hours after the government announced a crackdown on terrorism, underscoring the defiance of the terrorists and the frustration of the French government in trying to stop them.

Question: During a visit to Paris we would like to attend the opera. Can we get tickets in advance? A.H., Lafayette Hill, Pa. Answer: You can book before leaving home through Eventmet in Boston, or Keith Prowse & Co. in New York. Both can also provide you with schedules for the opera season, which begins in September. Keith Prowse (phone 800-669-8687) takes credit-card orders, then confirms them with its Paris office, a process that takes about 48 hours. Ticket prices are $175 for opera seating, including a $10 service charge.

With the weak dollar, Americans need all the help they can get traveling abroad. Paris is one place at which visitors can save money on lodging - if they do their homework. More than 400 rooms and apartments in Paris are available at reasonable prices. For example, a bed-and-breakfast association books single rooms per night for $27-$34 and doubles for $30-$38. Some places require a minimum of a one-week stay, and others offer daily rates. One company, Paris-Reveries, doesn't charge for children under 4. For more information, contact the French Government Tourist Office, 610 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10020.

It's hard to walk around Paris these days without being followed by Dan Rather. People keep asking you what you thought of Rather last night - or this morning. The CBS Evening News is broadcast five mornings a week here at 8 a.m. With the six-hour time difference, that's 2 a.m. in New York. So anyone in Paris can see Rather - with French subtitles a little more subdued than his hyped- up down-home English - seven hours after New Yorkers do. Parisians already take it for granted, of course, but it is a miracle - and so is the fact that if you have cable television here, you can get Cable News Network and the BBC. Everything is changing, literally right in front of us. A famous winemaker in Bordeaux told me that he makes his teenage sons watch Rather every morning at breakfast.