Feature: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (in Woody Allen's Movies)

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 | 9:25 AM

As far back as last February, the press began speculating about a supposed lesbian tryst between the stars of Woody Allen's new film "Vicky Christina Barcelona." Under a headline reading "Sapphic Steam," the New York Post's Page Six announced that they'd learned from an anonymous source that the scene between Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz was "extremely erotic" and that when the film reached theaters audiences would "be blown away and even shocked." Various news agencies picked up the story. Some even distorted it further; one website assured its readers in no uncertain terms that "Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz will have lesbian sex in Woody Allen's new film," as if the actresses were bypassing any notion of dramatic pretense and doing the scene purely for their own sexual gratification.

Even after "Vicky Christina" played the Cannes Film Festival last May, rumors of the combustible chemistry between the stars continued, but audiences seeing the film as it makes its way around the country in limited release will have to be pretty prudish to be "blown away" by what's on screen — the moment in question is a same sex make-out scene, infinitely less explicit than movies like "Bound" or "Mulholland Drive." I guess it's pretty hot by the standards of a Woody Allen movie, but that makes it pretty tame by most other measures. For 40 years, Allen has made movies about sex without ever actually featuring it.

Consider, for example, the alluringly titled "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" (1982). It sure sounds dirty — hell, the word "sex" is right there in the title. If you saw the DVD in a video store and didn't know anything about the movie or who made it, you'd have to assume it was a Shakespearian-themed porno flick. Not quite; it's an easygoing comedy, loosely based on an Ingmar Bergman movie, about three couples spending a weekend together at a house in upstate New York circa the turn of the 20th century. Sex is certainly in the air, but it's not ever really on screen. At the, ahem, climax, one of the characters dies mid-coitus. He enters the country house from the woods, but the camera remains outside. From within, we hear some grunts and the sound of clothes tearing before Allen cuts away. When we finally make our way inside, the character is already dead. His partner describes the act — "We did it all! Violently! Like two savages! He was screaming with pleasure, and at the highest moment of ecstasy he just keeled over!" — but we never caught even a glimpse. If you're looking for steam, sapphic or otherwise, you can skip this one; unless your idea of eroticism is the sight of Woody Allen in a pair of old timey bloomers.

Allen has one other film with sex in the title: 1972's "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask." And it, at least, comes a little closer to living up to its title. Based on the sex advice book by Dr. David Reuben, it's a collection of unconnected sketches about all manner of kink and taboo. It is undoubtedly Allen's most risqué movie, but it's also one of his silliest, and it only contains nudity if you count the sight of an enormous, disembodied, milk-squirting boob in a chapter about Woody as an author (whose latest book is entitled "Advanced Sexual Positions: How to Achieve Them Without Laughing") investigating the bizarre experiments of crazy Dr. Bernardo (John Carradine). The sequence also includes a man enthusiastically humping an enormous rye bread and Dr. Bernardo threatening Woody's female co-star (Heather MacRae) with gang rape by a troop of Cub Scouts. The movie doesn't have a great reputation, but it's most famous for the segment entitled "What is Sodomy?" in which Gene Wilder plays a doctor who falls for one of his patient's sheep; the funniest moment comes when Wilder's wife snuggles up to him in bed, sniffs, and goes "Why do you smell like lamb chops?"

The film also includes the longest sex scene in a Woody Allen movie, but it's not exactly graphic either; it's the film's final piece, "What Happens During Ejaculations?" Allen envisions the body and its functions as a futuristic spaceship (for 1972) with a crew that includes Tony Randall and Burt Reynolds; Woody himself is a reluctant sperm ("What if he's masturbating? I'm liable to wind up on the ceiling!"). An unseen guy named Sydney lays a woman in his car as Randall, Reynolds and their crew deal with plumbing trouble and even a sabotaging guilty conscience. "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*" also includes a man-on-man embrace (albeit a very blurry one) in a fake advertisement for a hair cream called Lancer, a rare depiction of homosexuality in Allen's oeuvre before "Vicky Christina Barcelona" (the only other significant one: Meryl Streep as ex-wife-turned-lesbian in "Manhattan").

Woody's character concludes the mad scientist chapter of "Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex*" with a revealing line: "When it comes to sex, there are certain things that should be always left unknown." And the technique of all-tell and no show has been a defining part of Allen's onscreen persona since the very beginning. His characters have a tendency to brag about their bedroom prowess, so long as there's no legitimate chance of consummation. As soon as the threat of actual intercourse looms, the jokes go from boasts to disclaimers. When Diane Keaton's Luna tries to proposition Woody's Miles Monroe for a whirl in the "Orgasmatron" in the futuristic "Sleeper" (1973), he's ready, but maybe not so able. "The only thing is, I have asthma," he warns, "so if you hear some wheezing, just give me a decent burial." As soon as they share a kiss, they're interrupted by some futuristic policemen, conveniently excusing Allen from having to take things any further.

If a full-on Woody Allen-directed sex scene is conceivable now at all, it is thanks in large part to Johansson, easily the sultriest of all the filmmaker's female stars. When characters in a Woody Allen movie begin to make love, we immediately look for the cutaway, not just because of Allen, but because the women in these scenes — Louise Lasser or Diane Keaton or Mia Farrow — are not exactly the graphic sex scene type. With Johansson, who knows? In her first pairing with Allen, 2005's "Match Point," Johansson shares several surprisingly hot love scenes with co-star Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which include bouts of clothes ripping and blindfolding that are particularly unique, not only for their heat, but in their total lack of comedy or irony. The movie may have its flaws — Johansson's acting may have its flaws — but Allen gives Johansson the perfect description of her own appeal: "What I am is sexy."

Still, that didn't necessarily mean Johansson was ready for graphic girl-on-girl with Penélope Cruz, or that Allen was the sort of guy who was ready to direct it. The very notion of Allen sitting there, stuttering his way through some direction, sounds more like it fits the description of a "Woody Allen sex scene" than Johansson and Cruz actually swapping spit. The entire thing was probably just a plant by desperate publicists looking to drum up interest in the work of a filmmaker whose last five pictures have averaged $8.3 million at the domestic box office, thrown to gossip columnists hungry for hot stories in the dead of winter. (The ploy might've worked, though — "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" had one of the biggest debuts of Allen's career at a healthy $3.7 million.) The poster for "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*" features Allen's answers to a series of questions about the movie. To the one that reads "How do you feel about intimacy on the screen?" he replies, "I believe anything done between two consenting adults is great. Between five, it's fantastic." But when asked if he'd be appearing nude his response was "No. I was afraid if I appeared nude we'd get a 'G' rating."

[Photos: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Weinstein Company, 2008; "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1982; "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask," United Artists, 1972; "Match Point," DreamWorks Distribution, 2005]