I am sitting in a Mexican restaurant with three friends and a pitcher of margaritas.

It’s been one of those 106-degree days and everyone is dressed accordingly, meaning light and Hawaiian for the men and light and low-cut for the women.

We’ve covered my thoughts on “Superman Returns,” “Click” and “Nacho Libre”; they asked.

As we continue to chat, I realize I have trouble staying focused on Nina’s eyes.

The problem is my eyes: They keep drifting to Nina’s breasts.

This is not something I am intending. Nor am I obsessed or any other perverse thing you might think.

It is due, perhaps, to a combination of the heat and the margaritas and the differences between men and women.

I notice I have the same problem with Sue - which is odd since we’ve known each other for 16 years, she is happily married and we are solid friends.

This sort of thing has happened with strangers, but my eyes always let go after the first glance. Or the second.

Now, as we talk, I realize my eyes have gone off on their own - like the magical remote in “Click” when it develops a glitch.

Stop it, I tell them.

They don’t even blink.

What to do? The tension inside me builds. These are my friends. I do not mean to letch. I mean to relax and have fun.

I decide to come clean.

“I have to apologize to the two of you,” I tell the women, “because I find I can’t stop noticing your breasts.”

Sue laughs and initiates a let’s-embarrass-Barry marathon.

Nina seems taken aback.

Strange word, “aback.” Why aren’t people ever taken “afront”? That would be a good expression for what I’m experiencing.

I’ve only known Nina through a half-dozen meals spread over five years. Thank god she laughs and gets comfy.

I ask her husband for support. “This sort of thing happens to all guys, doesn’t it?” I say. “You know what I mean.”

No doubt because they’ve been married forever and he can imagine the drive home, he keeps silent behind an indecipherable grin.

Thanks for backing me up, pal, I think. And I’ve known you a lot longer.

I imagine the margaritas are exerting some influence on my antics. I doubt I would be as open with women I had just met.

Surprisingly, after my pronouncement it becomes easy to maintain eye contact.

There’s probably a message in here somewhere.

Maybe next time we’ll order food sooner.

All women look good - if they’re happy with themselves and OK with their looks.

They have an aura. It’s irresistible.

They’re also brave. It takes courage to resist the barrage of “you’re not good enough” messages from Hollywood and the media.

The confidence killers met resistance at a recent screening of “The Devil Wears Prada.”

It was a benefit. The crowd consisted of 46 women and two men - the projectionist and me.

Great odds. Good energy. Excellent conversation after getting drilled by the movie’s teachings:

Be a size 4, not a size 6; be perfectly coiffed, eyelinered, lip-glossed and eyebrow-plucked; be well-shoed, fashionably clad and, if you need it, tummy-tucked, butt-tightened and de-wrinkled.

In other words, don’t be you.

“Prada” is a “feel-good” comedy so you assume the leading character eventually will get her values together.

Otherwise the whole exercise would be pointless. (Make up your own bitter joke.)

Based on a random sampling of passionate women, the marjority of the 46 _ all attractive _ seemed anti-”Prada,” though their reasons and intensity varied.

The most vocal objected to the above messages, although one planned to take her 10-year-old daughter so they could discuss the film afterward.

Another disliked the movie but loved the lingerie. That’s the best line of the night, the movie included.

In the fillm, Anne Hathaway looks gorgeous from the get-go, but the fashionistas thumb their noses at her apparent lack of style.

The real message: If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, damn it.

Saw “The Lake House” this afternoon. Sweet.

Keanu Reeves: surprisingly good.

His character lives in 2004. Sandra Bullock’s lives in 2006. They trade letters via a mystical mailbox in front of a lake house each inhabits - two years apart.

There’s also a scruffy dog that plays chess. He’s the most engaging character.

Sandra’s, a physician, is always on a downer for no good reason. Keanu’s, an architect, is aimless and blue.

Perfect for each other. In a celluloid universe.

Separated by time - you really have to buy into the premise; I did sort of - they’re safe from jumping into anything “serious.” And commitment’s just a 10-letter word.

Each hopes the other fills a nagging gap. Like B&J’s cherry garcia, only with less fat and fewer calories.

The idea: Somebody else fills the void so you don’t have to do it yourself. (Psych. 102.)
Then the void starts to nag again and imperfections in the ideal mate start to grate.

I knew that master’s in psych. wouldn’t go to waste. Thank you, Keanu.

I met Sandra once at a South of Market club. Lasting impression: She’s a good height for me.

Years ago, Jennifer Lynch, David Lynch’s daughter, visited the Bay Area to promote her movie “Boxing Helena,” one of the worst films ever made.

When she explained the story to me, it made sense. Sort of. And if she had accompanied each of the dozen or so people who saw it, they might have understood, too.

Jennifer, single at the time, told me that as soon as she meets a man she can tell how their relationship will go.

She imagines how they it will be after a week, a month, a year, longer. She believes what she pictures will always be accurate. And she decides whether to get involved based on those images.

I don’t know if she’s still single.

Suddenly Single Craig dates tall women. Evidently Suddenly Single heals quickly.

He brings tall women to film-festival parties. He takes one to press screenings for “Poseidon,” “Just My Luck” and “M:i:III.” We all arrive about a half-hour early, sit in press sections and schmooze.

Suddenly Single Craig, not his real name, is a colleague. He looks like a combination of Craig T. Nelson and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

But Suddenly Single Pillsbury doesn’t ring right.

Suddenly Single Craig does not introduce his dates. Some men are like that. I’m not sure why.

It could be an insecurity thing. Maybe jealousy. Or protectiveness.

Which are all related. And it could be that he can’t remember their names. I’ve been there and it’s embarrassing. But I’m betting on the insecurity thing.

I got jealous when I was involved with Diane — a woman friends called “a fox” — and an acquaintance hit on her during a rafting trip.

He did the male-challenge thing and I bit.

Afterward, Diane took me aside and said, “Don’t worry. You’re the one I want.”

That moment is etched in my brain forever.

When I take a date to a screening, I introduce her to friends or colleagues sitting nearby. That’s polite. That’s how I was raised.

I wonder about Suddenly Single Craig’s values. Then the theater goes dark.

Lessons learned from movies are not necessarily useful.

John Wayne convinced generations of males to prolong arguments with generations of females when, in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” he said, “Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.”

On screen, Clint Eastwood remained tight-lipped with almost every woman he paired up with.

Woody Allen babbles and bumbles in most of his starring roles. That includes “Scenes from a Mall,” a Paul Mazursky movie in which he bickers and bumbles with Bette Midler.

On screen, Woody’s funny, smart, vulnerable and neurotic. Yet most of the time he still gets the girl. (This begs for a stepdaughter comment but I’m going for the higher ground.) Woody would bumble with the women from the elevator. Most times I would, too. But after the press event I’m too tired. And I’m enjoying the high from turning in the story right on deadline.

So it’s easy to trade pasts and presents with the lady I met on the elevator.

Until the silences escalate. She disappears into her mind, then comes back.

I really have to go, I say. I don’t want to be late for my lunch appointment with the movie publicist.

I suggest we do something after. She says she’s already scheduled something else.

There’s an awkward moment, then she gives me an opening, saying she wants to hear about the movie I’m seeing after lunch.

I ask for her card so I can call her, ostensibly about the film.

She freezes. She’s new to the area. Maybe she doesn’t have one. Maybe it’s something else. Where’s Woody? Where’s Clint?

I don’t want to push, so I give her my card. She takes it, looks at it, puts it in her pocket.
We part. I scurry to meet my friend Anne for lunch. She gives me a female perspective on the elevator-lady episode.

When it comes to women and relationships, Terry, a friend and former movie reviewer, talks about “closing the deal.” You meet someone, check each other out, do the dance. Then you close the deal, meaning, you arrange to get together another day. Or you take her home and hope you don’t end up rabbit stew in another “Fatal Attraction.”

It’s a crap shoot. But you can’t win if you don’t play.

The elevator lady and I roll the dice in the hotel lobby after the film-festival event. We’re grown-ups. We know what’s going on but we don’t talk about it.

I tell her I have a lunch meeting soon, which is true, and I ask her to walk with me to the front of the hotel, which she does. Everyone else who attended the event conference is long gone. I wonder what kept her here; the thought passes.

She tells me her ex-husband — I think she’s letting me know she’s single, but I’ve been wrong before — is named after a famous movie star, Gary Cooper.

I say, “So he’s named Cooper Cooper”?

(In truth her ex is named after a different star. But I don’t want to I.D. him or her; she still uses his last name.) The woman looks puzzled at the Cooper-Cooper quip and says she doesn’t get it. I try to simplify. She looks more puzzled.

This means something. I’m not sure what. But I notice a tiny “Uh oh” sign blinking in the background, accompanied by Keaton singing “Seems Like Old Times” from “Annie Hall.”

Why is Woody Allen never around when I need a translator?

They had to drag me to “Just My Luck,” tie me to a seat and prop up my eyelids, like they did to Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange.”

But they didn’t make him watch Lindsay Lohan in a romantic pabulum.

She still looks like she’s 15. A minor. Among grown-ups. And her charisma’s recouping at Club Med.

Charisma attracts.

The woman I met on the elevator after the film festival to-do is loaded with charisma. On the ride down to the hotel lobby, it sparkles — the danger word — as she teases a hotel employee about calling her “Ma’am.”

She likes to play. A good thing.

After a while I jump in. I have a similar reaction whenever anyone calls me “Sir,” I say.

It makes me feel like a knight. Or like my father.

The woman laughs. And we begin the dance.

She asks who I am, am I staying in the hotel, the basics strangers toss about when they suddenly become aware of each other.

We look at each other as we speak. And I think of the scene in “Annie Hall” where Woody Allen talks with Diane Keaton about inconsequentials. And subtitles run across the bottom of the screen revealing what they are really thinking at the time.

I’m thinking, she’s good-looking. I like the wavy hair. She’s slender, seems comfortable with herself. Nice dress. Wears makeup.

Good energy. Familiar.

The elevator lands and we fumble. It’s one of those critical moments.

Allen and Keaton have many in “Annie Hall.”

We talk, fill a silence. We’re from the same state. We love film.

She’s this, I’m that. She asks a question, I answer.

After a stretch, she repeats the question, as if it had never been spoken before.

I wonder where she traveled in her mind in the interim. I don’t ask.

Bad women are the highlights in film noir. Like “Sin City.”

Like “Touch of Evil,” “Anatomy of a Murder” and the other selections in the Jazz/Noir Film Festival.

Often, a femme fatale slinks around in a tight black dress cut at the leg. She smokes, gives good come-hither, and sends a smitten man on a downward spiral.

If the man opened his eyes he would see the dark at the end of the tunnel, but he’s lost in the smoldering sexuality.

Versions of that happen in real life, too. I find I attract women who live on the dark side but vacation in the light. Why? Pheremones trump logic. And they look luscious in the light.

Usually they behave like Princess Perfect for three months to six months, then transform into the queen who poisoned Snow White.

I’ve stopped eating apples.

This is the pattern: The sparkle attracts. As it fades, baggage surfaces and is unloaded.

Granted, it takes two to tango, and to untangle, but only one to unpack. Patterns are patterns. You have to be blind or masochistic to ignore yellow caution lights blinking, “Uh oh,” “Uh oh,” “Beware,” “Beware.”

I wonder if the woman I met on the elevator is a femme fatale. And if so, what then?

There’s an old French film by Claude Lelouch called “And Now My Love.”

In it, a rascally thief who eventually becomes a filmmaker dines in a prison cafeteria when an old convict comes by to serve coffee.

“Three sugars,” the young man says.

“If ever you meet a woman who also takes three sugars, you should marry her,” the older man says. “Because then, at least you will have one thing in common.”

The truth is, something in common makes a good starting point but is not a deal-maker. We all know that.

The image from the Lelouch film popped into my brain when I met an attractive woman on an elevator and it turned out that we had at least four things in common.

This took place after an a.m. San Francisco Film Festival press conference at the St. Francis.

I had spotted her during the pre-speeches milling. She stood out among the throngs of nattily dressed media people, filmmakers and staff members circulating near tables full of pastries, fruit, coffee and tea.

We would not starve.

Unless the speeches went on forever.

And it seemed like they might.

This is a good organization run by good people. But year after year, the run of information about movies, schedules and special events turns into data overload and each word becomes indistinguishable from the last.

Then we write it all up and, if our computer is on the fritz, call it in.

And then we breathe.