Wonder Wheel

          Borrowing heavily from "A Streetcar Named Desire",  Woody Allen's new domestic drama is a starring vehicle for Kate Winslet. The setting is 1950's Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York.

          As he did for Cate Blanchett in "Blue Jasmine", Mr. Allen has created a memorable, tragic character for Ms. Winslet as Ginny, a married waitress in a Coney Island clam bar. It is a wonderful performance in an otherwise mediocre film.

          Jim Belushi co-stars as her husband "Humpty" along with Juno Temple as Humpty's estranged daughter, Carolina, from a previous marriage and Justin Timberlake as the object of desire for both Ginny and Carolina.  While Mr. Belushi and Ms Temple are both well cast and do surprisingly good work, Mr. Timberlake is terribly miscast as an intellectual Coney Island lifeguard who starts an affair with Ginny but later becomes interested in Carolina.

           It's a tangled web that collapses under it's own weight but the saving grace is the powerful performance of Ms. Winslet as a downtrodden woman spiralling out of control. What is remarkable about the film is the fantastic set design by long time Allen collaborator, Santo Loquasto.  The Coney Island of the '50's  is recreated in marvelous detail. A curious experiment for Mr. Allen is the lighting of the film. For the most part the film is awash in bright colors and glowing sunlight but in many scenes the lighting shifts dramatically to purposely underscore the scene. I found it artificial and distracting.

           The only real wonder in "Wonder Wheel" is Kate Winslet.