Movie Sex: The `Waiting Game' Pays Off -- Audiences Turned Off By The Lack Of Suspense In Instant Romances

He wants her. She wants him. But Hollywood has to find ways to keep these two healthy adults from hopping into bed together, even in an era when intimacy on a first date seems entirely natural, if not imperative.

When the lovers give in to their impulses too soon - as in "Bed of Roses" - the story has nowhere to go, and audiences are likely to be turned off by the lack of suspense. "Bed," which mated Christian Slater and Mary Stuart Masterson, blossomed Jan. 26, but soon wilted and was tossed out of first-run theaters like last week's bouquet.

"Up Close and Personal," which pairs a constantly re-styled Michelle Pfeiffer and an aging but elegant Robert Redford, ranked No. 1 and took in $11.1 million in its first weekend.

That's $5 million more than "Bed of Roses" did in opening in the No. 2 spot. Clearly, Pfeiffer and Redford are major stars, and that might account for the showing of their broadcasters-in-love weepie.

Then again, the hesitation waltz probably works better than the old slam-bam.

It takes Redford and Pfeiffer close to an hour to begin unbuttoning one another. But almost from their first eye contact, it is obvious that her Tally Atwater is working up a huge thing for his Warren Justice. But true to his name, Justice takes the high road, respecting Tally's needs to rise to the top - of the networks.

Even ambition sounds a little feeble when compared to the problems faced by the would-be lovers in another recent romantic comedy hit, "The American President." Here director Rob Reiner and writer Aaron Sorkin ponder a heavy question: Is it possible for a widower president to enjoy a sexual relationship?

The answer, of course, must turn out to be a swoony "yes."

But the course of true love never can run wild in romantic comedies, which yearn toward the discretion of the classics of the '30s and '40s. So Michael Douglas' chief executive and Annette Bening's environmental lobbyist keep themselves at arm's length, until one surprising night in the White House. Even after this discreet encounter, trouble ensues over "the president's girlfriend."

Timothy Hutton's piano man finds himself drawn to two women in "Beautiful Girls" as he waits for his high school reunion and wonders what to do about his lawyer girlfriend. But Natalie Portman's girl next door is far too young (13), and Uma Thurman's sexy new girl in town turns him down (she has someone else at home). So Hutton must remain in a sexless state, waiting for the lawyer to hit town, fulfilling our hopes for him by turning out to be Annabeth Gish.

In "If Lucy Fell," which opened last weekend, Sarah Jessica Parker and Eric Schaeffer play roomates who take most of the movie to figure out what the audience knows from the start: the reason neither can find the right lover is that they're crazy about each other.

Another current love story - though hardly a romantic comedy - which keeps its man and woman from consummating their relationship for the longest time is the much-honored "Leaving Las Vegas," which has won best-actor and best-actress nominations for Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue.

The reason for the failure to merge with a splurge has to do not with his nobility or her chastity, but with his preference for booze over sex. She, of course, is a hooker, doing business on the Las Vegas Strip. In any case, the delay imparts an aching tension to Mike Figgis' downbeat tale of a love that cannot live.

On the other hand, indefinite postponement of the act doesn't work for movie-goers either. The fact that Julia Roberts' "Mary Reilly" only dreams of being interfered with by John Malkovich's devilish Hyde may account for the film's failure to catch fire.

Delayed sex has been a staple of film, and literature, throughout the ages. The current fascination with Jane Austen and her virginal heroines underlines the contemporary need for restraint in matters of the heart.

But it is not necessary to go back to the 19th century - the era of Austen, the Brontes and Robert Louis Stevenson - to discover the dramatic powers of the art of dilatory ardor. From the start, Hollywood has separated the good girls from the bad, the men of honor from the bounders and cads.

In one immortal moment, Clark Gable threw up a "wall of Jericho" - a blanket - between him and Claudette Colbert in "It Happened One Night" - or maybe "It Didn't Happen One Night." Leo McCarey's "Love Affair," a seminal romantic comedy-weepie, kept Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer apart in 1939, and the director also separated Cary Grant from Deborah Kerr in the 1957 remake "An Affair to Remember."

Now there's some evidence Hollywood seems to be turning back to its golden years when men and women managed to subdue their lusts for a decent period of courtship and the building of mutual respect.