A kiss is sometimes just a kiss, unless it's Adrien Brody smacking Halle Berry's lips after his Oscar win in 2002 for 'The Pianist' or his latest smooch with co-star Rachel Weisz in 'The Brothers Bloom'.

The film by Rian Johnson is premiering at the Toronto film festival this week.

"He's a wonderful kisser," Weisz told a press conference on Tuesday of Brody. Their tongues were intertwined in an enthusiastic buss in a memorable scene in the film, she said. "It wasn't any old on-screen kiss."

"We needed a lot of rehearsal," commented Brody. "It was something we had to get just right."

"Unfortunately, he had to rehearse (it) with me," quipped Johnson.

The romantic comedy follows two con artists (Brody and Mark Ruffalo) who take a beautiful and eccentric New Jersey heiress (Weisz) on an adventure around the world.

Weisz portrays the titular brothers' innocent mark with "child-like enthusiasm that I'm sure (audiences) will adore. And so it wasn't difficult for me to play a man falling madly in love with her," said Brody.

Audiences are said to be starving for a good adult romance film of late. Indeed, there are only a handful of films that arguably fit into the Toronto film festival's romance category this year.

"Afraid of love"

"It's been a long time since there's been a real dramatic or tragic love story, a story of two souls uniting," commented Brody.

"Maybe we're just afraid of love," opined Ruffalo.

A self-described "big softie", Johnson announced on Tuesday that he fell in love during filming with a Serbian woman in Belgrade where the film was largely shot.

But to capture that "lightning in a bottle, the chemistry between two people, that spark is difficult to get. It's a rare thing to capture" on screen, he said.

Festival programmer Jane Schoettel told AFP the dearth of romance in theaters is due to an assumption in the film industry that "they must be female-centric to really work, and women have a tough time in Hollywood, so it's a vicious circle."

"It's also not respected enough as a genre," she said.

Schoettel noted the current trend is to saturate the marketplace with graphics-intensive films, which she adds is unfortunate because "there's always room" for romantic films.

She noted that audiences responded well to last year's festival smash hit 'Juno' by director Jason Reitman, starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera, and before that to the first 'Bridget Jones' Diary' movie with Renee Zellweger.

A welcome since then said Schoettel, is that more and more romantic tales are being told from the male perspective.

Schoettel points to Kevin Smith's 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno' premiering in Toronto this week, about two longtime friends who are having difficulty paying the rent for their shared rundown apartment, and turn to making internet porn to ease their debt burden.

This backward plot, starring Seth Rogen (Zack) and Elizabeth Banks (Miri), with supporting performances by ex-porn star Traci Lords as herself, eventually leads to romance.

The film is raunchy and verbally explicit, and some advertisements for it were said to be banned in the United States, but it is still is heart-touching.

Cera's latest film project, director Peter Sollett's romantic teen comedy 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist', is also premiering at the festival this week.