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| Photo cribbed from The New York Times |
The weird part is that the characters are so low-class; it's an awkward term, but it seems unavoidable for Humpty and Ginny and Carolina. Humpty is the 50-year-old operator of a carousel on Coney Island who is a recovering alcoholic, has a huge belly, and bellows grossly, while dressed in a tattered white undershirt. His wife Ginny is a promiscuous waitress in an oyster house on the boardwalk who is haunted by her failures while falling into adultery yet again. Carolina is Humpty's 25-year-old daughter, a vulnerable flower who was so desperate for a different way of life that she married a gangster when she was 20. Her returning to live with Humpty and Ginny kicks off the action of the plot. Her presence crowds the flat; she is spoiled and doesn't help out enough; she gets a job at the oyster house, but she is a bad waitress; Humpty saves all his money to help her go to night school. On top of everything else, her husband has sent thugs looking for her, so her presence endangers the others. A minor character in the mix is Ginny's son by a previous marriage, Richie; he appears to play no part in the main plot so he barely gets a mention. He is a red-haired boy of nine who starts fires, an understandable commentary on the situation. Richie's role is largely symbolic, and he gets very few lines or close-ups.
These are not Woody's people—they're not educated, sophisticated and witty. The reason Woody created these characters is explained right at the beginning by the only character he can identify with, Mickey, a grad student and veteran, who says that this is his story and he loves melodrama and larger than life characters. These characters don't second-guess themselves; they don't analyze and make ironic jokes; they just blurt out their raw feelings in long monologues, melodramatic and tragic, in the mode of Eugene O'Neill, a playwright who is mentioned a couple of times in the movie.
The acting is perfect. Jim Belushi totally sinks into the part of the hapless Humpty, permanently wounded by addiction to drink. Kate Winslet is a marvel as Ginny, one in a series of mature women whose faces have fascinated Woody. Juno Temple is Woody's latest fresh-young-thing, and she makes you think there might be a real, learning person behind that teeny voice and vulnerable sexiness. Woody's choice for his alter-ego this time—a Lifeguard who has a summer job on a local beach—is both fitting and amusing: Justin Timberlake, the rock star who makes bland look charming. He doesn't have to do any great emoting, but he is increasingly fascinated and dumbfounded by the desperate world he strays into.
The plot is the usual love triangle, with both Ginny and Carolina being attracted to Mickey, the grad student working as a Lifeguard who also serves as narrator. Mickey explains how a man can be drawn to a desperate woman by compassion while not being able to love her in the way she wants, in the way she comes to demand. He also states a recurrent theme with Woody: the Heart wants what it wants, logic be damned. Mickey has blundered into this untenable situation and tries to be honest and caring with both women.
The resolution is neatly built into the opening; the gangsters who are looking for Carolina find her and grab her off the street. The great Sin is that Ginny fails to warn Carolina that the thugs know where she is. Ginny knows that Carolina is with Mickey at a local pizza joint and she calls to warn her, but at the critical moment she realizes that she would be better off without her young rival, and she has a lapse of virtue, a lapse of human caring; she hangs up. When Mickey figures out her betrayal, he learns the nature of tragedy.
Woody Allen is 82 now, and appears to be a happy family man, so one might assume he is past any sort of sexual impropriety, but I checked it out anyway. Both Kate Winslet and Juno Temple have been asked about working with Woody. Both indicated that it was a professional experience with no interpersonal interaction. They came to the set in character and in costume, and related to Woody only in terms of the movie. They just ignored the decades-old accusation by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow and concentrated on the role. They both thought Woody was an incredible director. No one can deny that he got a bravura performance out of Kate Winslet, and he brought the best out of the others as well.
This movie got some pretty nasty reviews—and is generally considered a failure—but I loved it, and I thought it broke new ground far beyond the reviewers understanding.
