Not that every movie has to be scrupulously integrated. It would be great to see more movies with all-black casts, and the crossover success of the romantic comedy "The Best Man" last year or "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" in 1998 means we may get them. There's a thrill in seeing black actors starring in the classic Hollywood genres blacks have traditionally been excluded from (and a thrill in seeing just how viable those forms can still be). The hugely entertaining "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" is, except for its welcome sexual forthrightness, like those dishy women's pictures of the '40s, full of gossip and luxe surroundings. But it's a drag to see one character's white husband used as an example of her snobbishness. "The Hurricane" has no qualms about exaggerating the role of three white Canadians in freeing Rubin Carter from prison, but it doesn't even mention that in real life Carter had an affair with and eventually married one of them.

Presumably it's OK to show Washington going to bed with a white woman (Milla Jovovich) in Lee's "He Got Game" because her character is a whore. (That's how all the white women, and many of the black women, are portrayed in this viciously misogynist film.) But even that was apparently enough, as was reported when the film was released, to cause some black female viewers to claim that Washington had betrayed them. (There were no objections to Washington's bedding down with an Indian actress, Sarita Choudhury, for some truly sexy love scenes in Mira Nair's "Mississippi Masala.")

The only criterion that should be applied to movie pairings is: Do they work? Actors and directors are hamstrung if their exploration of human relationships is made to pass some test of sociological acceptability. Real-life relationships rarely conform to such standards; sexual attraction is chaos. Why should it seem otherwise in the movies?

Of course we should be able to see comedies and love stories and thrillers with two black stars. It's insulting (to both races) to assume that a movie with black actors will be successful only if there's also a white person in it. But whatever the justification, there are no good reasons to prevent moviemakers from pairing, say, Angela Bassett and Daniel Day-Lewis, Vanessa L. Williams and George Clooney, Snipes and Julia Roberts, Taye Diggs and Chloe Sevigny, Courtney B. Vance (one of the most underused good actors around) and Sigourney Weaver. Think of where racial separatism has gotten us in our movie past. There are no musicals that paired Lena Horne and Gene Kelly, no comedies in which Belafonte might have dallied with Marilyn Monroe, nothing to suggest what two fastidious actors like the young Poitier and the young Jane Fonda might have brought out in each other.

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