James Toback's wafer-thin bad girl movie "When Will I Be Loved" opens and closes with Neve Campbell taking a shower, a fact sure to please both voyeurs and hygiene buffs.

In between, there's plenty of time for the typical Toback enthusiasms - girl-on-girl sex, girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-guy sex - but scant allowance for more bothersome details like plot, character development and emotional intensity.

The result plays like a sustained, 81-minute irritation. Really, outside of watching Toback put Campbell in assorted sexual positions and experiences, there's no reason for this movie to exist.

Toback spends the film's first half hour letting us know that New York City daddy's girl Vera (Campbell) has a large and varied sexual appetite as well as expert skills with her shower massager. Then it's on to the story: Vera's hustler boyfriend Ford (Frederick Weller) knows a 69-year-old Italian media mogul (Dominic Chianese) who will pay $100,000 for a "date" with Vera.

An indecent proposal, for sure, but to Ford's surprise, Vera is game. Vera is, in fact, game for a lot of things, a smart young woman who makes no foolish choices, only calculated decisions. That those decisions lead to some dire consequences for the men in her life shouldn't rate as much of a surprise, although Toback's lack of interest in anything other than Vera's sexual shenanigans renders such plot developments irrelevant anyway.

Campbell, to her credit, holds your interest, even while clothed and even during an endless improvised scene opposite Toback, who has cast himself as Professor Hassan Al-Ibrahim Ben Rabinowitz, a Columbia instructor who wants to - what else? - get into bed with Vera. If "When Will I Be Loved" has an autobiographical moment, this is it, which is apparently why Toback made the movie. The question remains: Why did Campbell?

TITLE: "When Will I Be Loved"DIRECTOR: James TobackCAST: Neve Campbell, Frederick Weller, Dominic ChianeseRATED: R (sex, nudity, language)GRADE: * (on a scale of 5)