Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Koppel, a world away from the striking coal miners and meat packers whose struggles she chronicled in Harlan County, U.S.A. and American Dream, respectively, accompanies Woody Allen on his whirlwind 1996 tour of Europe with his Dixieland Jazz band. "Theoretically, this should be fun for us," Allen states. Indeed, the only time he seems blissfully happy is when he is performing his music; everything else seems to elicit vintage Allen angst whether its sending out his laundry in Milan ("I hope it doesn't come back breaded") or taking a gondola ride ("The gondolier could cut our throats and no one would know"). Koppel was allowed unprecedented access to the notoriously private Allen, and the film is most fascinating for its peeks into his relationship with, in his words, "the notorious Soon-Yi Previn," whom he has since married. She blithely switches breakfasts with him and rebukes him for not being more forthcoming with compliments for his band members, or not being more animated onstage. "I'm appropriately animated for a human being in the context in which I appear," he replies. Recommended. (K. Lee Benson)
Wild Man Blues
(New Line, 103 min., PG) Vol. 13, Issue 6
Wild Man Blues
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