Wonder Wheel
Starring Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake, James Belushi, and Juno Temple
Directed by Woody Allen
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
[rating: 3/5]
When Woody Allen released Blue Jasmine in 2013, he went on record saying his leading lady Cate Blanchett, who delivered a shattering performance that essayed a nervous breakdown, was “an atomic weapon”. It was a remarkable feat, a character in turn repugnant and beguiling, and Blanchett, who has yet to top it, never missed a beat. It matched Judy Davis’s terrifying neurotic in Allen’s 1992 masterpiece Husbands and Wives (Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters is another member of that remarkable gallery). In Allen’s latest film, Wonder Wheel, Kate Winslet, in one of her most fascinating performances, can now join the pantheon.
Set in a beautifully recreated Coney Island of the 1950s, Winslet is Ginny, a wife, mother, and waitress living on the edge of a breakdown. She was once poised for a career on the stage, has a young son heading for a career as a professional arsonist, and remains desperate for real love. She receives none it from her boorish husband Humpty, played here by a blustery James Belushi but she may have found in Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a local lifeguard and burgeoning playwright. Then, in an unfortunate, full-of-holes plot contrivance, along comes Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s alluring daughter who has just left her mobster husband after ratting him out to the FBI. She’s a marked woman and after returning to the first place her husband’s associates would come looking for her, takes the very public job of a waitress. It’s a shaky setup (as sloppy as anything in Allen’s lesser works like Whatever Works and Anything Else) but it proves to be little more than a setup for Ginny to destroy, and destroy she does.
It’s a handsome film, beautifully rendered, stunningly coloured, and all blocked to function like a play. With the fourth wall broken down so Mickey can lay it all out for us (Timberlake’s narration has a neat pop), characters barge in and out of the scenery, and Allen, an expert on depicting love’s journey from heaven to hell, keeps everything functioning in a heightened state. Literal to be sure but it doesn’t play to the rafters like an explosive play should. You want the other characters to match the leading lady but Allen has underwritten them and they come off as vessels. The lighting is a major factor here. There always seems to be a keylight bouncing off Winslet’s red hair and when scenes fold, Allen turns down the glare to signify it. But, it always comes back to Winslet who keeps Ginny in check. I leaned over to my friend halfway through and declared that no one else could’ve played Ginny. As ultimately ghoulish as she may be, Winslet owns her body and soul. You cannot take your eyes off her. It is one of the finest performances you’ll see this year.
