It’s that time of year again: time for Woody Allen’s ever decreasing fanbase to ignore their well-reasoned intuition and wish for the best from the overly prolific writer-director’s annual starry offering. At this stage of his career, coming off the back of the perfectly acceptable Café Society and the in-no-way-whatsoever-watchable Crisis in Six Scenes, expectations are low, the shining pleasures of 2013’s Blue Jasmine fading faster by the day. Wisely deciding against the boo-loving audience at Cannes, he’s chosen to debut his latest, Wonder Wheel, on the closing night of the New York film festival.
It’s fitting not just because of the less vocally disapproving crowds but because it’s based in Coney Island, making the film Allen’s first entirely based in New York since 2009’s Whatever Works. It’s set in the 50s and focuses on Ginny (Kate Winslet), a bored waitress whose dream of becoming a professional actor has long been buried underneath a daily routine that involves a job she hates, a son she tires of and a husband, Humpty (Jim Belushi), she resents. But Ginny is keeping a secret: a passionate affair with the lifeguard/wannabe poet Mickey (Justin Timberlake). Further complications arise with the shock arrival of Humpty’s estranged daughter, Carolina (Juno Temple), who is on the run from her mobster husband and takes a liking to Mickey.
Given Allen’s strict one-a-year strategy, his later films are usually accompanied with a lingering feeling that he’s on autopilot, sticking to themes and dynamics that he’s comfortable with, rushing through familiar territory with very little to add. If you’re playing Woody Allen bingo and your card reads “love triangle”, “emotionally frantic older woman”, “fresh-faced ingenue” and “handsome starving artist” then you’re in luck. Wonder Wheel covers ground that he’s covered before, which at this point is what we’ve come to expect from Allen. But unlike in his finer relationship-based dramas, there’s a shortage of insight, wit or much else to distinguish it from the pack.
In an attempt to force another strike of lightning and/or remind us that in the last decade, he did make a genuinely great film, Allen has made Winslet’s character feel like a lesser version of the faded socialite played by Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. There’s a great deal of overly mannered anxiety, nervy drinking and an often mournful, often furious, remembrance of youth. Winslet is a fine actor and to her credit, she avoids broader, cartoonish strokes, choosing instead to cut deep, but it’s a performance that feels more suited to Broadway than the big screen. One can almost feel her projecting to reach the cheap seats and it’s likely that the exposition-heavy script, filled with clunky, on-the-nose dialogue, would also work better on stage.
She handles it much better than her painfully miscast co-stars, though. As her brash husband, Belushi plays it all too big, while as her soulful lover, Timberlake is embarrassingly out of his depth. It doesn’t help that he’s forced to spout inanities (“I want to write plays about human life”), but his line readings are so earnest and overly pronounced that it feels like he’s just joined a small-town am-dram company and this is his first performance. Temple is better, if a tad affected, but is lumped with a thankless, thin role as one of Allen’s favorite recurring characters: the young woman who needs an older man to save her.
Don’t tell any of this to the Oscar-winning Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who seems blissfully unaware of the film’s many failings, gracing it with an aesthetic so beautiful that it almost feels like a waste. Allen’s films have rarely been remembered for their visuals, but Storaro, who also gave Café Society an unmistakable sheen, does fantastic, awards-worthy work here. Each scene is carefully, lovingly composed and he takes great pleasure in lighting the actors, whether it be in golden sunlight, bleak off-season greys or a selection of woozily reflected neon lights. There’s also a surprisingly ambitious and vivid recreation of 1950s Coney Island and coupled with Storaro’s aesthetic, it’s frustrating that the practical craftsmanship of others isn’t supported by a script that brings the requisite heft to the table.
It’s by no means the worst of Allen’s later films (Cassandra’s Dream remains unrivaled in that department) and the flashes of brilliance from Winslet and stunning visuals do lift it but there’s an overwhelming, existential pointlessness to it all. Allen’s lazy unengaged script is the work of someone short on inspiration, so why is he still churning these films out? If competent is now considered a compliment for him then why is anyone still funding them? Like Winslet’s character, Allen is stuck in the past and Wonder Wheel is a crushing reminder of his present.
- Wonder Wheel screened at the New York film festival and will be released in the US on 1 December and in the UK at a later date