WELCOME TO A DIFFERENT `WORLD' OF ROMANCE : THIS VEXING TALE FAR SURPASSES ITS COMPETITION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

In the flyspeck Texas town of Cross Plains in the 1930s, imagination was as rare as it was suspect. So when a spunky young would-be writer with the lyrical name of Novalyne Price met a genuine published author, it's no wonder that he set her head - and her heart - racing.

For Price, Robert E. Howard embodied all the promise that the world had to offer. And then she got to know him.

``The Whole Wide World'' tells the most vexing of love stories - passionate yet unconsummated, and no less difficult for lacking sexual complications - with uncanny simplicity and generosity of spirit. It towers above anything else that's been passed off as movie romance this year.

Played with flawless emotional honesty, intensity and wildcat humor by Renee Zellweger (``Jerry Maguire'') and Vincent D'Onofrio (``Full Metal Jacket,'' Orson Welles in Tim Burton's ``Ed Wood''), the movie is based on Price's memoir, ``One Who Walked Alone,'' written some 50 years after her relationship with Howard ended. In a superb act of poetic fate, it was the only thing she's ever had published.

Not so Howard, who by age 18 already had sold work to the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and at one time was the most widely read author of his generation. Howard's specialty was sword and sorcery - ``Conan the Barbarian'' was his deathless creation - a fantasy sub-genre beloved of adolescent boys. When Novalyne first meets the brash literary freebooter, she's inspired by his verbal dexterity and creative energy.

Once she reads a few of his juvenile stories, however, she's a bit less dazzled. Still, he has an undeniable gift for words, and although he sneers at her confessional, true-to-life narrative attempts, he is the only guy in town who encourages her to dream beyond the teaching job everyone else thinks should be enough for her.

Plus, Robert is kind of a catch. His father is a successful doctor, he's big and handsome in a fashion-challenged kind of way, and even though most folks feel he's just wasting his life, Novalyne knows he's one of the rare writers who makes a good living at it.

Trouble, is, Howard is also nuts. Not just a case of arrested development (though he's a pretty severe one of those), but someone who lives his stories in his head before typing them out. The guy has no concept of intimacy - although the couple's one big kiss is an all-time doozy - either, except where his dying mother (Ann Wedgeworth), to whom he is devoted, is concerned.

And his public behavior grows ever more erratic, even as his need for Novalyne's love becomes more desperately, hopelessly urgent.

Zellweger starts out doing the Texas spitfire thing with rare, subtle intelligence, then matures Novalyne over several frustrating years into a strong-hearted woman who accepts the fact that some things just aren't worth putting up with for love. D'Onofrio balances bravado and neediness to eerie, compelling effect, and, in Robert's awkward but uniquely touching expressions of affection, is immensely sweet.

The film was made by Dan Ireland, a longtime producer on the American independent scene who is directing for the first time here. Employing a deceptively modest, episodic approach, he constructs a profoundly complete emotional universe here. It's something akin to what the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu did in such quiet but devastating family dramas as ``Tokyo Story'' and ``Late Spring,'' yet thoroughly American through-and-through.

There's a leathery toughness supporting the spine of ``The Whole Wide World's'' longing tenderness. And its romance of the mind - even when one of the minds is drowning in visions of muscular warriors and half-naked wenches - proves that nothing can be quite as fiery as intellectual passion.

the facts

The film: ``The Whole Wide World'' (PG; language, mild violence).

The stars: Renee Zellweger, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ann Wedgeworth.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Dan Ireland. Written by Michael Scott Myers, based on the memoir ``One Who Walked Alone'' by Novalyne Price Ellis. Produced by Ireland, Carl-Jan Colpaert, Kevin Reidy and Vincent D'Onofrio. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Town Center, Encino; Colorado, Pasadena; Monica, Santa Monica; Goldwyn Pavilion, West L.A.; Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

Our rating: Four stars

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Photo

Photo: Flawless emotional honesty, intensity and wildcat humor comes alive in ``The Whole Wide World,'' with Renee Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio.