WITH the success of ''Shine'' and ''Hilary & Jackie'' on the film festival circuit and the impact they created even among non-music aficionados, perhaps one way to improve musical education in this country is to expose both young and adult audiences to quality films on the lives of musicians.

If the themes of love, intrigue and obsession are common drama fare, they are even more pronounced in the musical world.

Competition between voice teachers and their pupils reached absurd, even comic, proportions in the Belgian film, ''The Music Teacher'' directed by Gerard Corbiau. The battle of tenors in the film reminded me of the real-life rivalry between two sopranos who had the same colorful teacher.

Stage actress Baby Barredo--who once figured in the Pergolesi opera, ''La Serva Padrona''-- told me that the reason she bolted the opera world and jumped into the theater without regrets was because she couldn't stand the intrigues in the opera scene

Obsession with an opera singer led a young letter-carrier to steal her gown after her concert in the French film, ''Diva'' which starred an honest-to-goodness black soprano, Wilhelmina Fernandez.

The boy who keeps his godmother's underwear in the latest Chito Ro¤o film, ''Laro Sa Baga'' had an equivalent in ''Diva'' where, before making love, a young man asks a prostitute to wear the gown he stole from his favorite opera singer.

About to reach Manila is another film on music teachers, ''Music of the Heart,'' which is about a violinist (Meryl Streep) who bravely introduced classical music in the public schools of Harlem where black parents didn't want their children to ''waste their time on the music of dead white men''

(This line reminds me of what I heard in my island province: ''What we need in our place are piggery and abaca livelihood projects, not classical music.'') The scene to watch in this film shows Meryl Streep playing the Bach ''Double Concerto.''

Two films shown in last year's Australian Film Festival and in the recently concluded British Film Festival probably convinced moviegoers that musicians lead fit for a long-running soap opera.

If ''Shine'' made a hero out of the piano, ''Hilary & Jackie'' certainly scored a lot of musical points for the relatively unpopular cello.

Geoffrey Rush who played the role of the Australian piano prodigy, David Helfgott, won the Oscar for best actor, while Emily Watson, who plays the cellist, was once again nominated for the Oscar after getting an earlier nomination for ''Breaking the Waves.''

To make the role convincing, Watson took cello lessons and the preparation paid off handsomely in the film.

On the other hand, Rush had to exert extra effort to look like a credible virtuoso. He befriended the Helfgotts and studied the ex-piano prodigy's mannerisms and rhapsodic speech patterns on reams of audio and video tape. He took a refresher course at the keyboard and filled in the technical gaps with mime.

What's the latest in Manila after the festival conquest of ''Shine''?

For music lovers, the most touching film in the British Film Festival was Anand Tucker's ''Hilary & Jackie,'' which is about two musically gifted sisters, one a flutist played by Rachel Griffiths and the other, the celebrated English cellist, Jacqueline Du Pre, played in the movie by Emily Watson.

The movie has enough informative concert scenes to make the viewer curious about the cello. There is one backstage scene after Du Pre's Wigmore Hall debut where a rich admirer gifted her with a Stradivarius Davidoff (1712) cello which costs more than a million US dollars.

The Elgar cello concerto played in the movie by Watson will be heard for the first time in the Philippines on March 21 next year with cellist Renato Lucas with the Philippine Philharmonic under Oscar Yatco.

Some of the celebrated cellists who have visited Manila are Mstislav Rostropovich, with whom Du Pre took master classes in Moscow (also seen in one sequence of ''Hilary and Jackie'').

Another outstanding cellist heard in Manila was Tchaikovsky gold medalist Antonio Meneses (ex-husband of Cecile Licad) who once used a Goffriller cello, the same kind used by Jacqueline Du Pre.

Last Oct. 3, a Chinese-American cellist named Angela Lee made her Philippine debut at the St. Stephen's Concert Hall and enchanted her Filipino audiences. A foreign critic, upon hearing her, wrote: ''Ms Lee's performance is Jacqueline Du Pre revived.''

By coincidence, one of Lee's teachers in London was William Pleeth who was Jacqueline Du Pre's teacher at the Guildhall School of Music at age seven.

The legendary cellist--in the film ''Remembering Jacqueline Du Pre'' by Christopher Nupen--recalled her years with Pleeth: ''Practising was never too much of an effort and when I came to Bill Pleeth then, I became very studious and worked extremely hard.''

Rostropovich--from whom Du Pre studied from Jan. to May 1966 in Moscow--was heard in Manila in the '80s playing the Dvorak cello concerto. When Du Pre finished her master class with Rostropovich, the latter remarked he had finally found someone who would continue his work as a cellist.

Dame Margot Fonteyn, another frequent Manila visitor, was also portrayed in ''Hilary & Jackie'' as the person who gave Du Pre temporary shelter before her death in 1987.

A scene in the movie where Dame Margot was seen conversing with Du Pre in the hospital had the cellist telling the English prima ballerina assoluta, ''My sister used to play the flute but she gave it up in favor of marriage. Now she no longer plays music, just feeding chicken in the countryside. But she has a marvelous husband who makes love very well. I borrowed him from my sister and if you want, you can try him.''

In the movie, the most shocking sequence was how Hilary shared her husband with sister Jackie out of love.

But the most touching message of the film is the question: Is there life after concertizing?

Jacqueline Du Pre was a highly revered, world-famous musician but, as the film showed, she was miserable in her private life. When Jackie noted that her sister was happy even without music because of a loving, caring husband, she wanted to share that happiness to the extent of asking that her sister's husband make love to her as well.

The most riveting element of the story is the overwhelming friendship of the two sisters, even though they would later find themselves rivals in the field of music. She garnered acclaim on the cello; the other didn't do as well as a flutist.

Would a film on musicians be a possibility in this country in the new millennium?

Marilou Diaz-Abaya, who cried unabashedly after watching ''Hilary & Jackie'' in Germany, said one of the film projects she is considering revolves around young musicians and gifted children.

Intimates Abaya: ''I am looking at the little lives at the National Arts Center in Mt. Makiling and I am asking the question: what is sacrifice at the altar of art when you have a special child?''

At one point in the mid-'80s, while Cecile Licad was making waves with her Rachmaninoff concerto, Abaya tried it, but it was too soon. ''We have to convince our producers that audiences will be interested in such a film,'' says she.

Why would she do it at all?