SMALL AUDIENCE MOSTLY FAVORABLE AT OPENING OF WOODY ALLEN'S NEW FILM

The small audience that turned out for the first showing of embattled filmmaker Woody Allen's newest movie, "Husbands and Wives," mostly turned thumbs up after it's 5 p.m. debut Friday at the West Park 4 Cine.

Some admitted to coming out of curiosity sparked by recent scandalous revelations and accusations about his personal life. Others were Woody Allen fans immune to the controversy.

Shooting in a documentary style, Allen's single-camera is orbited by two couples one played by himself and former partner Mia Farrow attempting to rediscover or redefine passion and happiness within their marriages. Each one becomes intrigued by new people and possibilities.

It is obvious now that Allen and Farrow's 12-year relationship was dissolving during the writing and making of the film. Some of the scenes are harrowingly honest given what we know now. Reality bleeds through in line upon line.

"Do you ever hide things from me?" Farrow's character asks Allen's early in the movie. Later, contemplating having an affair with one of his students, he says, "I see myself sleepwalking into a mess."

Now almost everybody knows that Allen secretly began a romantic relationship with Farrow's adopted daughter. Farrow found out when she discovered nude pictures he'd taken of her daughter. She then accused him of molesting one of her other children.

It's long been true that in Woody Allen movies, everything is subtext. This one creates a new category of subtext. When novelist Allen and the young student he is infatuated with go to the home of a cabby who has found his manuscript, Allen compliments the cabby's young daughter. The cabby, in turn, replies: "If you don't mind my saying, you've got a beautiful daughter yourself."

It's supposed to be funny and painful, but not that funny and painful.

Allen's self-deprecating humor, always driven by New Yorker, Jewish, pale ectomorph male angst, has a new and perhaps unwelcome dimension. "All this suffering, how you make it so funny," one character says admiringly of Allen's novel.

Twenty-seven-year-old Adam Bradshaw had seen nearly all of Allen's movies but none on the big screen before. "His movies were never popular enough to be in the theater," said Bradshaw, who grew up in Kennett.

Allen's "Love and Death" is his favorite movie.

Bradshaw said the film "is very insightful about relationships. He knows how men and women think."

In the film, Farrow tells Allen she is uncomfortable with the autobiographical details in his novel. Bradshaw said the film made him squirm at times, too. "It did feel like you were reading his diary."

Joe Crocelli, a young man from Chaffee, was a bit disappointed in the film. "It wasn't what I expected. To me it was almost like a documentary."

He labelled Allen's life "a mess."

One middle-aged couple who declined to give their names split on the movie, he liking it more than she. He had no judgment about the controversy in Allen's private life. "I think he's a contemporary person," he said.

For those who want to see the fusion of life and art revealed, this film is the ticket. All that's missing are the tabloid headlines.