The 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival (6.14 to 6.24) will kick off with Woody’s Allen‘s To Rome With Love. Sony Classics will open the anthology film on Friday, 6.22. Of course, the world premiere will happen in Italy two months earlier — on Friday, 4.20. I’ve asked SPC about a US press screening concurrent with the Italian debut, or at least sometime later this month or in early May.

If that’s a no-go I’ve been thinking about renting a car in Nice on Monday, 5.14 and driving to San Remo or Genoa and catching it in a commercial plex. Which will set me back at least 200 euros if not more when you figure in car rental, gas, hotel and meals. That’s a lot to pay to see a Woody film a few weeks in advance.

A trusted source has just informed that I won’t be able to see an English-soundtrack “lingua originale” version with subtitles of To Rome With Love anywhere in Italy because only Italian-dubbed prints will be shown throughout the country, even in Rome or Milano or Genoa. I had assumed all along that a subtitled version would play in the major cities because cultured cineastes over there hate dubbed films as much as they do here. I’ve been told that the trades are going to forego reviews from their Italian stringers because of this issue.

The considerate thing, again, would be for Sony to let US critics see an English-language version here in the States on or before 4.20. The source says Allen, naturally, wants US critics to wait until an English language version is screenable.

To Rome With Love is Allen’s first anthology film (i.e., separate stories with characters who don’t cross-pollinate) since Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex. He contributed a short called “Oedipus Wrecks” to New York Stories (1989), but that was along with short films by Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola.