MOVIE REVIEW STREISAND'S TENTL' HAS SOLID TOUCH By SHEILA BENSON Times Film Critic A8 director co-writer co-producer and star Bar- bra Streisand has been audaciously successful with so much of "Yentl" (at the Village in Westwood and Cinerama Dome) that she almost overwhelms its weak points She has drawn a fascinating and loving portrait of a distant period and a culture She has gotten lovely performances from all her cast especially Mandy Patinkin as the ebullient lovesick focus for two women Her film is beautiful to look at (and as a scholarly beardless boy so is she) And she has made the noisy argumentative traditional Hebrew method of pursuing wisdom seem nothing less than passionately exciting She has accomplished this with taste sureness and a sly sense of fun On the other hand there is that score: Michel Legrand's music lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman It begins liturgically which is fine and fitting moves into a lugubrious middle period in which everything begins to sound the same and ends in a "Funny Girl" flourish So you can't have everything in life Streisand and co-screenwriter Jack Rosenthal have turned Isaac Bashevis Singer's spare folk tale somewhat on its side Singer's Yentl was a tomboy with a talent for teaming (a good thing too since all she accomplishes in the kitchen is disaster) who thwarts logic and Talmud by disguising herself as a boy and marrying her study partner's sweetheart His story is also a delicate mystical investigation of sexuality This Yentl is a budding 1904 feminist denied by the rigid laws of the time and her religion the right to fulfill her potential Her widower-father (Nehemiah Persoff extremely affecting in a small role) Please see STREISAND Page 16
