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."

[Additional photos: "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy," Warner Bros. Pictures, 1982; "Match Point," DreamWorks Distribution, 2005]