But every now and then an alert, funny antisocial comedy like "Denise Calls Up" comes along, reminding us that some of us aren't gung-ho team players but introverts who prefer to hole up in a solitary way, far from the madding crowd.

Jonathan Demme touched on this in 1977 in his charming "Citizens Band" (a.k.a. "Handle With Care"), a film about people who could communicate only over their CB radio units. And there have been aspects of "hiding out" in Spike Lee's recent "Girl 6" and in the two contemporary "Cyrano de Bergerac" knockoffs: Fred Schepisi's "Roxanne" (1987) and, to a lesser degree, Michael Lehmann's current "The Truth About Cats and Dogs."

Debuting filmmaker Hal Salwen, however, really takes the subject to its limit in the wiggy "Denise Calls Up," a series of acutely observed monologues that have been deftly edited to play like a running dialogue among seven friends who never seem to leave their computer terminals, modems and phones. One couple in the film, in fact, who are engaged to be married, have had a three-month relationship without ever meeting in person -- the ultimate comment on the decline of human contact in the technological '90s.

"Denise Calls Up" is about how people are either alone in their cars or alone on the phone (or alone in their cars on the phone), but never really together. What's alternately witty and scary about the movie is that it really isn't that much of an exaggeration. If you have an answering machine, call waiting, a cellular phone, a fax, e-mail or a personal computer, you can literally go for days without having any real human connection. It's safer.

It's also why we have so little patience and tolerance with one another when we finally do get together.

Salwen, who both wrote and directed the film, has fashioned a sort of low-rent Robert Altman film. This is the kind of movie Altman would make if he set out to do a quick, low-budgeted, 80-minute "call-waiting" comedy.

We get the point right off in the opening scene, which depicts the aftermath of a party that never happened. Angie (Aida Turturro) is cleaning up after her birthday party, a gig that none of her workaholic friends could make. They were all too busy -- on the phone or in front of their word processors. Oh, sure, they liked the idea of celebrating Angie's big day when they discussed it via a series of e-mail and telephone conference calls, but when push came to shove, none of them could pull themselves away from their terminals.

Barbara and Jerry (Caroleen Feeney and Liev Schreiber) are the couple who met via a telephone blind date, set up by Barbara's friend Gale (Dana Wheeler Nicholson) and Gale's ex-boyfriend Frank (Tim Daly). Barbara and Jerry have their courtship in cyberspace, consummated by phone sex, natch.

Both Barbara and Jerry, incidentally, are telecommunication workers.

Aparallel subplot involves the unexpected relationship between Jerry's friend, Martin (Dan Gunther), a sperm donor who is contacted by the woman he impregnated via long distance -- the titular Denise (Alanna Ubach). It freaks him out because he feels that he has somehow lost some of his, well, anonymity. After all, he did his best to avoid conventional contact. Denise, meanwhile, seems to be the ultimate telecommunicator. She doesn't even seem to have a home or a room of her own, only a cellular phone. She's always outside.

These seven urbanites can express themselves and release their inhibitions only over the phone. When tragedy strikes one of them, it's because that person was preoccupied with a phone call, but the group bounces back with a prompt replacement who, of course, they never actually meet.

Salwen has shot his cast in a series of small rooms, usually in close-up, and has directed them in their phone-call dialogues in a soft, subdued way.

"Denise Calls Up" is a new-style character study that debunks the notion that technology is bringing the world closer together. Instead, we're being kept apart, electronically, while our social skills are going down the toilet.

At the sound of the "beep" ... cringe.

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