Woody Allen’s “Wonder Wheel,” a romantic comedy-drama starring Kate Winslet as an adulterous woman in 1950s Coney Island, is the director’s best film in years.
The movie, which had its world premiere Saturday at the New York Film Festival, has many of the familiar nostalgic trappings of a period Allen film, including starry-eyed characters with artistic aspirations who become embroiled with romantic misunderstandings.
But what the story hinges on is a moral dilemma that arises for Ginny (Winslet), a waitress, that fits squarely inside the emotional diorama that she has arranged for herself in the manner of Blanche DuBois — a nexus of ambition, regret, infidelity, jealousy and fear.
Winslet’s performance is a remarkably rounded depiction of a woman tortured by a cruel mistake in her past, for which she has only temporarily obtained rescue and redemption through cohabitation with her second husband, Humpty (Jim Belushi), a fellow recovering alcoholic who, like her, works on the boardwalk. Ginny is preoccupied by her son, a budding arsonist, and by her affair with a lifeguard and aspiring playwright, Mickey (Justin Timberlake).
But it’s the arrival of Carolina (June Temple), Humpty’s estranged daughter from his first marriage, which truly turns the household upside-down. After marrying a gangster several years earlier, causing a rift with her father, Carolina has since seen the error of her ways.
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