Even so, the fact that it's tough to fake an oral-sex scene is probably one of the things that has contributed to the paucity of them on-screen.

Where even the most graphic genital sex can be simulated -- with a body double if need be, oral sex by definition requires the most recognizable part of a performer's anatomy -- his or her face -- to be in the shot, lending every such scene the dangerous They-Totally-Did-It! frisson of Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in "Don't Look Now."

Not that there haven't been other films that featured dirty mouthfuls. "Monster's Ball," "Boys Don't Cry," "Two Girls and a Guy," and Campion's "Holy Smoke" all gave nods to the muff dive. There's Julie Christie again, giving Warren Beatty a hummer under a table in "Shampoo." Even "Pretty Woman" includes a scene in which Julia Roberts unzips a seated Richard Gere's pants and hunkers down for some quality time between his legs. But then, she was a hooker. And the other films feature convicts, transsexuals, cult members, threesome-enthusiasts, Warren Beatty, and other creatures of supposedly voracious and perversely fervid appetites. Disabled Vietnam veteran Jon Voight's oral attention to Jane Fonda in 1978's "Coming Home" is practically patriotic.

"Regular" people -- like Ryan's writing teacher, Ruffalo's cop, Bello's cocktail waitress, and Macy's casino employee -- have not traditionally partaken of anything resembling realistic oral pleasure in the movies.

"It has to do with our lingering Victorian attitudes about sex," said Dan Weiner, sex therapist and assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. "There are still a lot of things we do that we don't talk about and that we don't feel comfortable seeing in a public place like a movie theater."

Past oral-sex scenes have also followed a fairly routine model: one head moves downward from a shared kiss, leaving the frame. The camera lingers on the other partner's face. There is panting, groaning, glistening, and a conveniently speedy paroxysm of eye-rolling pleasure.

"That's the standard scene -- the man's head goes down, cut to the woman's face and then she goes into ecstasy," said Betty Dodson, the sex therapist, masturbation advocate, and inventor of something called the Vaginal Barbell. "It sounds like Jane [Campion] did better. Three cheers for Jane."

"Usually what you see is the huh-huh heavy breathing," said Bello, wetting her lips, throwing her head back for a moment, and slapping the table of our booth for a climax imitation that immediately recalls Meg Ryan's orgasmic theatrics in Katz's deli in "When Harry Met Sally." She took another bite of her bagel.

"What it looks like in real life can include that" -- Bello nodded her head to the side, indicating her own passion-flushed face of 20 seconds ago -- "but that is not the only thing that sex and intimacy is about." Bello reminds me that her on-screen cunnilingual climax follows directly on the heels of a painful conversation that her character has with Macy's character. She said that she conceived of his ministrations as healing as much as stimulating.

"Orgasm isn't always a joyful release," said the actress. "Sometimes it can be the release of old wounds, of a desperation to experience real feeling again, of pain. I mean, sexuality is just so much more complicated than what we have experienced in the American cinema so far. Thank god there are some films that are starting to be more open to real kinds of sexuality."

Weiner agreed. "If there are more films that are featuring oral sex," he said, confessing that he has barely set foot in a movie theater since the birth of his first child three and a half years ago, "then that's a positive development. I agree that there should be more non-penis-centered sex on the screen. The broader the range of sexual experiences depicted, the better. It removes some of the taboo feeling from some of these acts."

Weiner said that as a clinician, he frequently encounters problems with people whose ideas of what sex is supposed to be have been influenced negatively by the media.

"Most people -- except under rare circumstances -- do not get to actually witness other people having sex," except on movie and television screens, said Weiner. The glorified Hollywood couplings they're left with give them "unrealistic expectations of what sex is supposed to be, and then they set terribly high standards for themselves."

Which is not to say that this spate of munchy erotica portrays the amorous embrace with the stark realism of, say, your life.

Maria Bello is hotter and William H. Macy more talented than anyone any of us is likely to take home anytime soon. And have I already mentioned Mark Ruffalo? Meg Ryan -- despite a distressing new look that suggests she has had a small trout implanted in each of her lips -- is Meg Ryan. And the lighting, music and cleanish sheets of these films suggest scenes that already trump reality.

But one of the pleasures of kinkier mainstream movies is that they jump-start our imaginations in a way that the familiar sweat-damp sexual wrestling of beautiful people has long since ceased to do. When I told Bello about the oral sex episode in "In the Cut," she paused for a moment and fixed her eyes in the middle distance.

"It sounds amazing," she said dreamily, snapping out of it only when I asked her if she was trying to picture the scene.

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