Here’s a remarkably fine, distinctive film, the victim of criminally bad distribution, which ought to be better known.

In 1933 Novalyne Price, a young schoolteacher and aspiring writer in Cross Plains, Texas, met the most famous man in town, the pulp magazine writer (and creator of Conan the Barbarian), Robert E. Howard. They liked each other, and Novalyne wanted to learn about writing, so they dated for a time (she was his only known girlfriend). Eventually they broke up due to Howard’s volatile personality. In 1936 she went to college in Louisiana and never saw him again. He committed suicide that same year.

But thankfully for fans and scholars, Novalyne had taken up the Boswell-like discipline of writing down conversations she overheard or participated in, including those she had with Howard. She kept these journals for many years.

In the 1970s and ’80s, after Howard had been rediscovered by fans and critics alike, she grew irritated with the amount of armchair psychoanalysis that was being done on her old friend. She organized her journals into a memoir called The Man Who Walked Alone, which came to the attention of filmmaker Dan Ireland. And so the movie The Whole Wide World came to be.

The role of Robert E. Howard is a big one, and actor Vincent D’Onofrio is every inch its equal. I’m not sure that what we’re seeing here is actually close to the original (I can’t help thinking it’s more a New York boy’s idea of a Texas boy than the genuine article), but he fully inhabits the part and you can’t take your eyes off him. (There’s an interesting scene, no doubt lifted directly from Novalyne’s journals, where he complains of his weak chin. This is manifestly untrue of D’Onofrio, but not of the real Howard). He plays Howard as a bipolar man-child, sometimes euphoric and grandiose, sometimes depressed and frightened at the prospect of facing life without his dying mother (to whom he has an unhealthy attachment), and sometimes just angry at the world.

Equally effective is Renée Zellweger as Novalyne. Now I have to confess I don’t care much for Ms. Zellweger as an actress. Her “I just bit into lemon meringue pie when I thought I was getting banana cream, and I don’t like lemon” face just doesn’t work for me. But I can’t deny that she gives a powerful, affecting performance here as a strong, compassionate woman who cares for a man but knows she can’t be his salvation.

The photography is beautiful and elegiac, the music stirring.

And one further thing impressed me. The Whole Wide World is surprising in its dearth of movie clichés. When you’re dealing with a small town in the south, there are scenes and characters that are just demanded by the Hollywood Handbook. None of these characters or clichés show up here. There is no bigot in the story. No hypocritical preacher. No noble, mystical black man. I gritted my teeth (so to speak) expecting the inevitable scene where Howard would challenge Novalyne to throw aside small-town conventionality and LIVE LIFE TO THE FULL! It never happened. Instead, there’s a scene where he embarrasses her by talking loudly about a sexy scene from a Conan story in a restaurant. After she storms out, he follows and tells her she cares too much about what people think. She responds with a spirited defense of the importance of having consideration for other people’s feelings.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the next time you hear a speech like that in a Hollywood movie.

Furthermore (and I credit the movie’s faithfulness to its source material for this) I don’t recall any foul language in The Whole Wide World. No explicit sex or nudity either. There are adult themes, but there’s no reason a teenager shouldn’t watch this excellent film.

My only regret is that the actress originally cast as Novalyne, Olivia D’Abo (who played the Princess In Distress in the movie Conan the Destroyer) dropped out due to pregnancy. Her presence would have added a layer of meaning to the film, and (unlike Renée Zellweger) I think she’s gorgeous.