Video Movies : ****Excellent***Good**Fair*Poor

*** 1/2 “Wish You Were Here.” Fries. $79.95.

Writer-director David Leland’s rapturously good film shows us the sexual life and times of Lynda Mansell (Emily Lloyd)--whose real-life inspiration became a notorious British madame. Lynda bikes precipitously across the bowling greens and seaside boardwalks of her somnolent English town, turning her staid neighbors on their ears. In this diabolically tricky role, 16-year-old Emily Lloyd gives the brashness an upward lilt that keeps us laughing even when we’re aghast. To give an essentially comic film such dark overtones is dicey stuff, but Leland and Lloyd bring it off--aided by the film’s wonderful period flavor and the breath-taking mother-of-pearl loveliness of the cinematography.