Allen Film: Mirroring Real Life? : L.A. Screening Evokes Mixed Feelings

“Why do I hear $50,000 worth of pschotherapy dialing 911?”

It is a line Woody Allen, denizen of the analyst’s couch, could have uttered at his extraordinary news conference earlier this week. But instead he says it in his true-to-life new movie, “Husbands and Wives,” which was screened on the West Coast for the first time Thursday night.

The joke, delivered after a seductive 21-year-old student portrayed by Juliette Lewis comes on to her professor (played by Allen), drew the biggest laugh of the evening from an audience at a Hollywood sound studio made up primarily of journalists, film teachers and friends of the director. Lewis was the only cast member to attend the screening.

In “Husbands and Wives,” to be released by TriStar on Sept. 23, Farrow and Allen play a married couple whose sex life has soured, in part because they disagree over whether to have a child. The separation of their closest friends, played by Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis, impels them to re-examine their own relationship and acknowledge their own attraction to other people.

Stunned by the parallels to some of the recently disclosed details of Allen’s life--his breakup with longtime companion Mia Farrow, reports that he has been angered by her desire to add more children to her large family and his admitted love affair with the actress’s 21-year-old adopted daughter--some viewers did not quite know how to react to this highly personal and largely serious film.

Knowing snickers erupted when Judy Roth (Farrow) asks her husband Gabe (Allen) such questions as “Do you ever hide things from me?” and “Do you think we’ll ever break up?” and when Gabe, reacting to his friend’s (Pollack) leaving his wife for a dimwitted aerobics teacher (Lysette Anthony), exclaims: “It’s like your IQ is suddenly in remission.

Barbara Zussman, an English teacher who described herself as a “great fan” of the director, said she enjoyed the movie but felt it was impossible not to wonder how much of the dialogue was actually in the script and how much evolved from the “emotional realities of the relationship (between Farrow and Allen) as the film was being made.”

“It’s kind of a shame to watch a film, particularly of his, and put that into it,” said Zussman, one of about 20 members of an English teachers’ organization who attended the screening. “You’re not looking at a film as a film. “

Screenwriter and journalist Jeff Silverman found it hard to laugh during “Husbands and Wives.” “Here’s someone who has given us a great deal of pleasure over the years so there’s not a lot of glee to be had at his expense,” he said. “It’s like a screen has been removed and we’re in their (Allen and Farrow’s) bedroom. It’s not a place we feel comfortable being.”

For some, discomfort was exacerbated by the home-video feel of much of the movie, which relies almost entirely on indoor settings. At various points the characters are interviewed by an off-camera questioner. “They must be into videotapes in that family,” said one member of the audience, noting that Farrow taped her 7-year-old adopted daughter’s accusation that Allen abused her--a charge the director has vehemently denied.

Others reacted more cynically. “With all the publicity that’s going on at the moment, I wonder if that is just (trumped up) to coincide with the opening of the movie,” said Edie Bato, a businesswoman. Pointing to a companion, she added: “This lady said she didn’t think Woody Allen would stoop so low, but I said, ‘Listen, it’s the film business, and people do things, you know.’ ”