By Barry Paris

New York -- Swedish director Lasse Hallström ponders the making and breaking of "The Cider House Rules" into a film -- a process that took 13 years, in all, for author John Irving. It's a complex tale of the relationship between Dr. Wilbur Larch, an eccentric orphanage physician, and Homer Wells, an unadoptable orphan he loves and trains as his own son. At the heart of it lie two highly controversial issues: abortion and incest.

And, of course, "the rules" -- whether they govern black migrant apple-pickers at a New England cider house, in this fictional case, or you and me.

"The thing about 'the rules' that I found fascinating," said the soft-spoken director during an interview in New York, "is that they're made by people who don't know how people live. The movie plays around with that concept in many areas -- rules about marriage, race, adoption, abortion, sexuality. To me, it's about breaking those rules that don't make sense or aren't connected to reality."

Hallström has broken the filmmaking rules during the course of a career to which the word "idiosyncratic" is often applied. He began in Swedish television, directing music videos for the band ABBA, and then made pictures for Svensk Filmindustri (the legendary film-combine that gave the world Greta Garbo, among others).

Hallström came to American attention with his charming "My Life as a Dog" (1985), the adventures of a mischievous 12-year-old boy sent to live with a village-full of eccentric rural relatives. His subsequent U.S. films have included "Once Around" (1991), an offbeat romance and actors' showcase starring Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Aiello and Gena Rowlands, and a poignant little hit called "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" (1993), which introduced Darlene Cates and garnered a surprise Oscar nomination for an unknown kid named Leonardo DiCaprio.

Personal journeys are his cinematic specialty in general -- children's journeys, in particular. In "The Cider House Rules," opening Christmas Day, he says he encouraged improvisations from his young performers -- "creative chaos," he put it -- who were almost all local boys and girls obtained from three New England casting calls.

"He formed a really unique bond with them," said one of the producers. "He would never condescend but always crouch down or kneel and look 'em in the eye when he talked to them or gave them directions." Their comfort level was evidenced by the fact that they could be found playing chess or backgammon between takes with the adult star, Tobey Maguire.

At 23, Maguire was hardly more than a kid himself and not much more "unknown" than the small fry. He plays the leading role not as a stereotypical "innocent" but in a very unusual way, devoid of histrionics, that was encouraged and admired by his director.

"I loved the choices he made," said Hallström, "the risks he took. The producers would call me up after the dailies and worry that what he was doing 'wouldn't show.' But it does. Tobey's really trusting, able to convey things emotionally in a scene by not pushing it. He has the restraint of that character, who is afraid of being bewildered, trying not to show it by 'acting normal' -- the irrational response of smiling when he confronts the incestuous father."

Hallström is equally enamored of his bigger-name co-star, Michael Caine (as Dr. Larch), "a gentle actor, from the school of low-key choices, who works from relaxation, not tension. There was a great connection and respect that dovetailed between him and Tobey on the set and the screen."

Irving's are among literature's most perfect heroes, and what faults they do have seem almost perfunctory. But Hallström says he and the author both worked to un-romanticize Homer and make his crises -- romantic as well as professional -- relevant to the real world: "We looked for the moments that were real and honest. We wanted to portray the nitty-gritty encounters, the struggles -- in the acting and the visual -- but I didn't want to be too crude or gross" with the incest and abortion themes.

Irving says bluntly that the story, derived from the life of his grandfather, is "didactic" in its defense of abortion. Hallström says his film rendering attempts to be nonjudgmental. The incidents selected for the screenplay represent a small part of the novel, which would've required an eight-hour miniseries to film in full.

Hallström and novelist Irving are said to be kindred spirits with similar visions of the world -- creating separate universes but grounding the characters who inhabit them in reality through a combination of humor and pathos. ("Grape" and "Garp" -- why, they're almost anagrams.) In "Cider House," Irving himself plays a small role, that of "the disapproving stationmaster."

By all accounts (including Irving's own in "My Movie Business," his chronicle of the filming) no author has worked so closely -- or so approvingly -- with a director.