Airy Nothing

By RICHARD CORLISS

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY

Directed and Written by Woody Allen

Onward and upward with the arts. First he outsolemnized Ingmar Bergman with Interiors. Then, with Stardust Memories, he scored a modest 5 out of Fellini's 8 1/2. Now Woody Allen has transported Shakespeare's "wood near Athens" to upstate New York at the turn of this century for A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy. As might be expected, none of these homage-pastiches measures up to the original. But then, neither Bergman nor Fellini nor even Shakespeare ever tried writing a Woody Allen comedy.

Allen did try--eight times, from Play It Again Sam to Manhattan--to the kind of crescendoing acclaim that might sound monotonous to an ambitious artist. Like Chaplin after The Great Dictator, Allen may have felt he had outgrown both the comic character he created and inhabited and the kind of movie his audience expected of him. And so Allen has pulled his persona out of shape, stretching the sad-clown face to accommodate loftier musings. In reaction, moviegoers have pulled back: a Woody Allen movie is not the purring money machine it used to be.

There is enough of the old Woody Allen in AMNSC to remind the still faithful of the old abundant pleasures. The interweaving themes are sex and love; the tone is summer-solstice warm; the six characters dance an amorous roundelay whose steps are guided by biology, sympathy and caprice. Woody is again the chronically lovable shlemiel, torn between his passion for the ethereal Ariel (Mia Farrow) and his longing for the wife (Mary Steenburgen) he cannot satisfy sexually. When he tries and she finds his ardor disgusting, he retorts, "How can it be? I haven't taken my clothes off yet." Allen's directorial eye finds amusement in restraint, allowing characters to wander in and out of a static frame, playing droll tricks on his own autocratic camera. Gordon Willis has shot the pastoral exteriors in delicate earth tones. In one lovely shot, Steenburgen, a backwoods madonna, reclines in the high grass and gently places a large, soft hat over her face. Camera and subject have relaxed into a moment of Manet beauty.

The undulations of plot--mistaken identities, furtive meetings in a forest haunted by impish spirits, a magic ride across the midsummer night sky, even an arrow that pierces the heart of one swain (Tony Roberts)--are meant to recall Shakespeare's Dream. Ingmar Bergman painted a lovely gloss on the subject in Smiles of a Summer Night. So why can't Allen have more fun with it? No film labeled a sex comedy should offer the truism "Marriage is the death of hope" four times, to be written on the blackboard of the moviegoer's mind. No Woody Allen comedy should mosey for arid stretches without a well-turned gag. And no director should insist that actresses like Farrow and Steenburgen affect the wild ringlets and neurotic stammer of previous Allen girleens.

Woody Allen has chosen to jettison those aspects of his comedy that made him a national endearment, while clinging to acting and directing mannerisms that even his audience may have outgrown. Has he lost the knack? Or just misplaced it? An answer should come soon enough. His next film--not a period piece, we are advised--surfaces at Christmas. Pray it's not called Twelfth Night. --By Richard Corliss

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