Penelope Cruz with another blonde in Head in the Clouds.

It’s tough, sometimes, being a Woody Allen fan. You’re not just constantly put in the incredibly awkward position of being expected to defend the indefensible (see: marrying your girlfriend’s daughter), you’re also asked to defend films like Hollywood Ending and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. That’s why I was happy to read this shamelessly publicisty blurb in today’s Page Six:

SCARLETT Johansson has a steamy lesbian sex scene with Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s upcoming “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” A source tells us: “It is also extremely erotic. People will be blown away and even shocked. Penelope and Scarlett go at it in a red-tinted photography dark room, and it will leave the audience gasping.”

Okay, so audiences would have to actually show up for a Woody Allen movie — or a Penelope Cruz movie, or a Scarlett Johansson movie, for that matter — in order to gasp. Chances are, that isn’t happening. And while it’s true that Match Point was a bit sexier than Michael Caine boffing his sister-in-law in Hannah and Her Sisters, it’s rather doubtful the former Allen Stewart Konigsberg will achieve a David Lynchian hypnotic, audience-silencing Mulholland Drive effect here. Still, what’s not to like about this?

Of course, I say that as someone who is so dedicated to supporting Penelope Cruz’s on-screen lesbian antics that I watched Head in the Clouds in its entirety. Even worse, I endured the interminable Don’t Tempt Me just to see her butchified and leering at Victoria Abril. Curiously, she didn’t seem all that different than she does on The Late Show.