The famous Ferris wheel in Coney Island amusement park sits like a writing on Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel. From window of cottage where Ginny lives with her husband Humpty in Kodachromleuchtenden fifties, one has a good view of tourist attraction, which reminds with nostalgic transfiguration of better times. The interiors are built like a atre stage, in background is Ferris wheel omnipresent in Space: Longing object and Evil omen at same time.

Listed on this stage is Boulevard ater, as is often late of aging eminence. Ginny is trapped in an unfortunate marriage. She has to blame herself (she believes) and refore sees herself condemned to a life with a choleric drunk, whose idea of a romantic date confined to a trip to pier, where he with his proletarian friends fishing rod into water Keeps. Ginny, on or hand, dreams of Hollywood, while browsing through her film magazines she flees into a more glamorous world. In real life she works as a waitress in a diner on tourist mile. Humpty makes fun of her humble dreams, his world ends at entrance to park, where he is responsible for carousels.

Humpty (Jim Belushi as a greasy undershirt bearer with a questionable daughter fixation, which one might overlook with any or director perhaps graciously) is a figure that is typical of all films. His world is becoming more and more manageable, with each film it draws more toger, regardless of epoch or venue. His figures act according to always same patterns of behaviour, peculiarities of social milieu hardly interest him yet.

Belushi plays Humpty, as directors may have imagined a man from working class in 1950s, a caricature of Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski. In logic of book, this must be so that tragic drop of Ginny is all more painful. Kate Winslet has got an even more ungrateful role. Ginny acts like a psychic wreck, she has surrendered to her destiny. Bertolucci cameraman Vittorio Storaro lights up Winslet in most magnificent colours, but her beautiful despair finds no emotional reverberation.

Ginny is in need, sickly and hopelessly naïve. She throws herself at good-looking lifeguard Mickey, played by Justin Timberlake, on neck, who lives in Greenwich Village and quotes Eugene O'Neill. Her tête-à-tête goes well until Humptys daughter Carolina (Juno Temple) is at door. She's on run from her Mobster husband, looking for shelter. It's only a matter of time before Carolina and Mickey meet. The rest is predictable. All figures have now been delivered so much to ir constraints – or to ir director's – that he can be content with mere variation of plot building blocks.

Woody Allen exceeds any tolerable level of nostalgia

Characteristically, Timberlake acts as narrator in Wonder Wheel, speaking directly to camera, but not knowing, but through exaggeration. Allen has not yet written an interesting female figure in his entire career, in his last films women were at best hysterical – or docile muses. He also identifies with men in Wonder Wheel. The warm light he immerses in places gives impression of age sentimentality that transcends any tolerable level of nostalgia. It seems as if everyone wants to reconstruct his idea of "good old cinema", even gangsters who appear at some point at Humpty, talk like a James Cagney film. His picture of women is not same.

This is matched by a recent article in The Washington Post, in which author Richard Morgan reports on his findings in all private archives. He rummaged through Unverfilmte screenplays and drafts that go back to 1960s. His conclusion is devastating: "All works dripping before misogyny." Time and again it is about relations between men and very young women.

The name Woody Allen is regularly white elephant in room during discussions around Harvey Weinstein. As early as 2015, Ronan Farrow raised serious accusations against his far: his sister Dylan had accused all of sexual abuse. Farrow accuses Hollywood of hypocrisy, nor is Allen sacrosanct. Of course, it would be foolish to measure conduct of a director at his work, industry is currently highly sensitive. But feeling of a bowl remains after wonder Wheel, even Timberlake and Winslet were criticized for ir cooperation with all. In Hollywood, nerves are bare, while Woody Allen has established himself in past.

Date Of Update: 12 January 2018, 12:03