Christine Lahti’s “Petunia” screened at New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival and soon drops upon us.

“It’s about a dysfunctional family finding their way for affection. Looking for love and sex,” she told me. “It’s no chick flick just for young people. It shows the many walks of life. There’s this older couple. The matriarch — that’s me — struggling in her marriage. No sex for months. Then her husband takes Viagra, and there’s this huge desire.

“The movie has heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual overtones. She hopes coming together after this lovemaking will do it for them as a couple. It doesn’t.

“We did that scene on a dining room table which, I understand, others have done. I tell you, my back was hurting. But I wasn’t naked. I’ve never done that in films, and I’m too old to do it now. We filmed it movie style. Post-lovemaking. Like he’s bare-chested, and I’m pulling up a strap.

“On the smallest budget, a couple of hundred thousand dollars, we filmed in the cheapest place to rent outside Manhattan. No heat, no water. It had an outhouse, and the crew peed in the snow. It was freezing. Midwinter. We had to use space heaters. Lighting was in a certain way so you couldn’t see the breath coming out of our mouths. We’d inhale and just focus and between scenes I was shivering.

“Also my character has an aging crisis. I had to throw vanity out the window but, God, it was hard to look at myself. To make my face appear puffy, they stuffed cotton in my mouth. My speech became cottonmouth dry and I had a pufferfish look.”

In real life, non-puffy Christine’s married 27 years, has kids in college, lives with her husband on the ocean in Santa Monica and “loves this chapter in my life. Freedom to travel more. Downscaled home. Rollerbladed this morning. Not worrying I’m late for my children. Plan to do more theater. It’s great.”

DESPITE parents snarling and teachers playing Spin the Bottom with pupils, New York’s education system is considered progressive. Abortion clinics will be available in every high school by 2014.

A FIRE closed Gina La Fornarina, 91st and Mad. Three months later, reopened, they’ve fed Woody Allen pasta, Anne Hathaway veggies and whatever model Adriana Lima eats . . . Marion Cotillard says, time to put away forever the fourthology, fifthology or whatever sequel’s in store for Batman. Enough, she says . . . How about in future — one shot of one star on one red carpet facing one camera without one hand on one hip? Once?

WHILE Dems pummel Mitt’s business background and gaffe-prone foreground, a GOP Web ad’s pushing “Senator Sellout.” Clips from Obama’s 2008 run show his pledge to ignore lobbyists and special interests. Journalists then turn from the screen, label him a “hypocrite” and say his administration is riddled with lobbyists and cozy with special interests. Political pros call it “devastating.”

This country’s political manure gets deodorized in Ohio. It’s all about stimulus. Billions have gone to China. American prosperity has also gone. Despite several swing states with large electoral votes, the way our beloved country works, historically seems you can’t win without Ohio.

BARRY Landau. Sporting an ankle bracelet. Sentenced to seven years. In August scheduled to turn himself in. Convicted for stealing historical documents.

We met decades ago. A press agent who loved attending parties with a male friend, he’d report who’d been there or into his restaurants. Then Landau quit p.r. Eventually, needing money, he sold his late mother’s possessions. I bought a pair of earrings.

Years went. Maintaining Washington connections, he stayed in Clinton’s secretary’s house. He always dropped DC nuggets. Even organized a Teddy Roosevelt-type railroad train festooned in bunting for some inauguration. And if I went to any White House function, he’d request souvenirs. Like the ticket, place card, or imprinted napkin. But I never understood how he supported himself.

Labeling himself the Presidential Historian, he wrote a book. He claimed an extensive collection. Like White House State Dinner menus from generations back.

Who knew that’s how he made a living. The court called him “a con artist.” He confessed to stealing museum, library and institution documents from the New-York Historical Society, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, Clinton’s secretary’s house, etc., etc. Federal agents seized more than 10,000 items from his 57th Street apartment. George Washington letters, Marie Antoinette signatures, John Adams papers had been stuffed into his pockets and coats.

I always wondered how he supported himself. Now I know.

A TRAVELER fussing at the airport ticket counter: “So many stories about how badly airlines are doing. Who cares about that? A European vacation’s the equalizer. People come back as broke as those of us who can’t really afford to go in the first place.”

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.

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