Mia Farrow is in bed with Frank Sinatra. It is clear that they have just made love. She's looking satisfied, while there is something between a leer and a smile on his face, when Old Blue Eyes leans over her and says, "How did you like it -- my way."
The needle goes straight through the red, and the kitsch-o-meter explodes. Forget Madonna, Roseanne, O. J. Simpson and all the rest. Fox offers a watershed moment in docudrama sleaze and kitsch with "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story," which airs at 8 tonight and Thursday on WBFF (Channel 45).
The tone of all four hours is somewhere between a leer and a smile. Every famous and not-so-famous person here is writ small; the movie is a grab bag of neuroses, hysteria, childishness and self-absorption. From Farrow to Sinatra (Farrow's first husband), Andre Previn (her second), Woody Allen (her third), John Farrow (her father) -- well, it would be a shock to someone not familiar with their work to discover that some of these folks frequently created art that touched, moved and even inspired people.
Patsy Kensit, who has been in a dozen forgettable made-for-TV movies, plays Farrow, and she does a credible job of creating a persona out of the pastiche of laughable scenes.
Dennis Boutsikaris plays actor/writer/director Allen, and he doesn't even get a role to play -- just a series of whines and leers. Boutsikaris does have Allen's phrasing, intonation and gestures down all the way to the little cough Allen often makes before answering a question. But it's more a matter of impersonation than acting. And Boutsikaris can't give us what isn't in the script -- a coherent character. Boutsikaris does, though, deserve praise for spending four hours on screen wearing the most laughable wig since Joe Pesci in "JFK."
Allen comes off in the film as an unrepentant, unconscionable, sexual libertine who spends half his time being afraid of germs, elevators and nature, and the rest of the time gazing at his navel or looking for young girls to ogle and seduce.
What makes Farrow, Allen, et al. worthy of four hours of dramatization by the great Fox television network, of course, is the child abuse charges leveled against Allen by Farrow. After working with Allen for 10 years and having a child with him, Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing one of their adopted children, 6-year-old Dylan.
This very public breakup came after Farrow discovered nude pictures of one of her older adopted daughters, Soon-Yi Previn, which were taken by Allen. When confronted with the pictures, Allen admitted that he and the teen-age Soon-Yi had been having an affair.
(A criminal court in Connecticut found Allen not guilty of abusing Dylan. But a family court awarded custody of the three Farrow children -- to whom Allen was legal father -- to Farrow.)
The four hours are just one groan-erous moment after another: Allen wearing a beekeeper's mask when he has to go outside into the wilds of Connecticut, a flashback of Mia Farrow as a girl stumbling upon her father in an act of adultery at a Hollywood party that seems to have been attended by every pop icon of the 1950s and '60s, and the Maharishi making a most unholy move on Farrow at his ashram with the Beatles flashing peace signs in the background. (At least the Maharishi didn't say he did it his way.)
For many years, I have resisted the it's-so-bad-it's-good school of criticism on such television docudramas. I've fought it because I think such an approach sanctions this kind of sleaze and ignores the ways in which it debases popular culture.
But, on one level, I admit that you can watch "Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story" as good-bad television and get some pleasure out of it. A warning, though: After it's over, you are going to feel the need for a hot shower to wash away the slime.