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'Wonder Wheel' • Movie
Review: Kate Winslet
Singes in Woody Allen's Dour Drama
By Peter Travers, rollingstone.com November 30, 2017
Actress sets the screen on fire in filmmaker's torrid period drama
about broken Brooklyn dreamers.
Kate
Winslet is on fire in Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel, playing Ginny, an unhappily
married waitress living near the boardwalk on Brooklyn's Coney Island circa
1950.
This broken dreamer is pushing 40 and reaching the limits
of her patience with Humpty (a solidly affecting Jim Belushi), the carousel-operator she married to
provide a semblance of security for her pre-teen, budding-pyromaniac son
Richie (Jack Gore).
The Wonder Wheel outside their window spins in circles – just like
Ginny, who drinks too much and lashes out at anyone who doesn't
like it.
She's
lost any hope for her would-be acting career or a fresh incentive in life. Then
in walks Mickey (Justin
Timberlake), a studly young lifeguard who sees himself as a
dramatist ready to give Broadway a new voice. "I relish
larger-than-life characters," he tells us in banal voiceover. (Allen
doesn't give the role many colors, which limits Timberlake’s
performance.) The kid is a delusional prettyboy. But
Ginny, who Winslet makes larger-than-life,
sees him as her way out. They're both kidding themselves.

This is somber material, like something
Mickey might write while imitating Clifford
Odets, that socially-conscious playwright known for his tough talk and
thrusting the audience into the middle of a dramatic conflict without preamble.
In Barton
Fink, the 1991 film from the Coen
brothers, the title character played by John
Turturro was created in the image of the Waiting for
Lefty author, an up-from-poverty New York Jew whose plays championed
the common man. Hollywood thought it wanted "that Barton
Fink feeling," until his seriousness choked off the box office. You
might get that "Barton
Fink feeling" watching Wonder
Wheel, since Allen
lays low on the laughs to brings us in to the lives of loud desperation led by
his characters.

Take Belushi's Humpty who, tired
of his "mopey" wife and her "mopey" son, tries to reconcile with his adult
daughter Caroline (a stellar Juno
Temple). She's being pursued by the mob; the young woman has
also taken a romantic interest in Mickey that sparks a final
clash-by-night confrontation.
The focus stays, as it should, on
Ginny. The character draws on Blanche Dubois,
the tragic heroine of the Tennessee Williams drama, A Streetcar Named Desire,
who Allen reimagined for Cate
Blanchett to play (to Oscar glory) in Blue Jasmine. Winslet, as always, goes her own way, delineating
Ginny's selfishness and anger without negating her questing mind and heart. Her
final speech about marriage (one of the writer-director's best) is a
crusher.

All the sturm and drang is given a jewel-like setting by the legendary
cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and
production designer Santo Loquasto.
Still, there are valid criticisms of Wonder Wheel as a film that
feels more like a stage play – its claustrophobic atmosphere can be stifling.
But even covering familiar ground, Allen finds the blunt truth at its
core. As Ginny is stripped of her fantasies and
exposed to the harsh glare of reality, Winslet stands her ground, as if to say
attention must be paid. It should be. Her performance is absolutely
astounding.
Delicious
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