BY D.I.

A rarity: passionate, emotionally naked, "show-us-your-tears" journalism that works. Ostensibly a fairly standard-issue documentary about the obviously unjust conviction of a Michigan man and his father on a charge of child molestation, The Jaundiced Eye has its eye on a much bigger issue: that the attempt to sensitize the legal system to the interests of children in custody battles has resulted instead in a form of social madness. The process of "listening to" a child in legal surroundings has become a hopelessly political process, leading inevitably to what can only be described as a domestic riot ending in a lynching. Director Nonny de la Peņa doesn't feel obliged to take sides, and the films final conclusions are disturbingly even-handed. This is a case where everybody loses.