The fact is, words can be awfully limiting. We could be sick of talking about relationships. According to social historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of books on divorce and modern courtship, "We're in a talky culture. We talk everything to death." Lately, she said, many people have started to confess that their deepest love attachment is to their pets. "Some people find it superior to traditional male and female relationships," she said.

In human relationships, as filmmakers have known from the start, people identify with problems. Great love stories require great obstacles. But it's just not that easy anymore to follow up boy-meets-girl with boy-loses-girl. "We are a society that doesn't have a significant level of shame anymore," said director and UCLA professor Linda Voorhees. "If a man and a woman like each other, the audience says, why don't they just go to bed? If she likes him, why doesn't she just tell him?"

And boy-gets-girl is equally difficult. Even when Tom Cruise gets Renée Zellweger at the end of "Jerry Maguire," the experienced among us tend to think, "Yeah, but how long will it last?"

Yet even in a cynical, disconnected time, filmmakers believe that audiences appear hungry for any emotional connection. Producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher planned "Memoirs of a Geisha" to be more than a mere love story. "It's also a triumphant struggle of a little girl who's a slave. Through the power of love, she fights her way through poverty and through war." It is also, they said, a passport to a world that no longer exists.

On a smaller scale, "Pride & Prejudice" is still a favorite with the loyal group of romantics who can spend hours watching another version of the tortured social dance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Time will tell what audiences make of "Casanova," a costume comedy of licentiousness in a time of repression.

A simple formula for simpler times, boy-meets-girl may have seen its day. Hollywood might actually be growing up. Even the lighter-weight movies seem to be trying to reach for something more poignant. "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," a film that began in a crass "American Pie" style, segued, however awkwardly, into a story about the growing pains that come with creating an honest relationship.

More ambitious movies may well help redefine our notions of what love is. "Epic love stories" and "the power of true love" may take forms we can't yet imagine. Thomson looks forward to it.

"If I live long enough," he said, "there might be a version of 'King Kong' where the steamer is shipwrecked and Kong and Ann wind up on a desert island, as happy as anyone."

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