The Discreet Charms Of Accountancy.

IN the recent German film ''Yella'' a young accountant survives a car crash engineered by her stalker ex-husband, leaves town, meets a mysterious private equity fund executive and lands a job as his assistant. Initially brought on board because her command of spreadsheets allows her to raise questions at critical junctures, Yella, the accountant, soon becomes a full partner in her employer's scheme to shake down financially imperiled start-ups, skim a few hundred thousand euros off each deal and start a new life. To those of us who harbor a secret passion for high-quality films about bookkeepers, certified public accountants, auditors and Internal Revenue Service operatives, the release of ''Yella'' is a very exciting moment in the history of the genre. This is not only because ''Yella,'' unlike virtually all accounting movies, does not look down its nose at practitioners of the trade (whose numbers include my wife and two of my best friends), but because the film is the fourth European release in the past decade to position accountants directly in the eye of the dramatic storm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]