Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel is seriously creepy and bad

WHAT’S it like to watch Woody Allen’s latest project in the post-Weinstein era? Uncomfortable as anything. Not even Kate Winslet could save it.

ALL it takes is one line of dialogue to cast a pall over a whole movie. Or in this case, three lines.

Allegations of sexual abuse have dogged Woody Allen for years. Not to mention that whole unsavoury episode when he shacked up with and married his teenage stepdaughter — 35 years his junior.

Or that Manhattan, one of his better films, is about a 42-year-old writer engaged in a relationship with a teenage high school student.

For decades, the prolific Allen has enjoyed a relatively easy separation between his work and his icky private predilections with recent movies such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris and Match Point earning well-deserved plaudits.

Others — Magic in the Moonlight among them — have not.

Watching an Allen movie, especially a newly released one, in this post-Weinstein era will undoubtedly be viewed through a different lens, a much more uncomfortably sharp lens, no matter how soft the cinematography is.

And with that, inescapably, in mind, certain lines in Wonder Wheel, anchored by a Ginny-Mickey-Carolina love triangle, come off as particularly inappropriate.

“I could've been a contender!”

When Ginny (Kate Winslet) jealously accuses her husband Humpty (Jim Belushi) of having an “unnatural attachment” to his daughter, her stepdaughter, you can’t help but wince.

Even if it’s the case that Carolina (Juno Temple) is in her mid-20s and there are no suggestions that Humpty views her sexually, the word sticks and it’s completely loaded.

When Carolina tells Mickey (Justin Timberlake) that “you’ve been around the world” and he responds, “but you’ve been around the block,” it lands oh-so-badly.

How about when Mickey talks about inexplicable “heart hieroglyphics” in an echo of Allen’s own “the heart wants what it wants” defence?

Creepy.

At times Wonder Wheel is an aesthetically beautiful movie, Vittorio Stotaro’s cinematography lighting up each frame with a range of saturated hues, from electric blue to pomegranate. You could freeze-frame at any point and capture a gorgeous tableau.

But the mid-scene shifts from one extreme colour to another are jarring and heavy-handed, only seeking to showboat and distract.

The movie is framed by the voiceover, and sometimes fourth-wall break, narration of Mickey, a choice that never really makes sense. Lifeguard Mickey is an aspiring playwright and Wonder Wheel counts among one of Allen’s stagiest movies so maybe it has something to do with that?

Why did Kate Winslet get sucked into this?

Mickey starts an affair with Ginny, a melodramatic clam house waitress bitter about her lost dreams of the stage, prone to throbbing headaches and monologues. The pair steals off for moments under the boardwalk or at his apartment in Greenwich Village. Ginny is convinced she’s in love. Mickey? Not so much.

She lives above an amusement shooting gallery with her husband and her young son, a budding pyromaniac. When Carolina, estranged from her father, shows up at their door, looking for shelter from her mobster husband, their little home becomes uncomfortably cramped.

Into this volatile mix, Carolina catches Mickey’s eye and an awkward love triangle of sorts start to form, a triangle Carolina has no clue she’s part of.

It’s all leading to the film’s piece-de-resistance, a minutes-long, one-shot take of Ginny’s breakdown, all dolled up in Norma Desmond grotesquerie. It’s a remarkable performance by Winslet but it’s also deliberately over-the-top in a way that doesn’t quite work.

None of the characters are remotely resonant and none of them are developed except for Ginny.

Even without the Allen creep factor or the off-tone lines, Wonder Wheel is an exaggerated jumble. Everything feels more artificial than his usual work and that’s saying a lot for an Allen movie.

Rating: 2/5

Wonder Wheel is in cinemas from today.

If you’re obsessed with movies and TV, follow @wenleima on Twitter.