Echoes of Taxi Driver from Joaquin Phoenix as a deeply disturbed killer...
Mary Magdalene, in which a lavishly hirsute Phoenix looks pretty much the same, playing Jesus of Nazareth, as he does here.
He’s better-suited, physically, to the role of a disturbed killer. And at least he piled on the pounds to play Joe (again evoking De Niro), whose bare torso is all blubber, muscle and scars.
Indeed, there can be no doubting the commitment on both sides of the camera, but Ramsay’s meticulous, highly stylised direction makes it an uncomfortable watch.
It’s an uncomfortable listen, too. The deliberately harsh score is by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who got a richly-deserved Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread, but won’t sell many soundtrack CDs on the back of this. The latest Woody Allen film,
Wonder Wheel, has a much easier sound; lots of cheerful Fifties harmonies whisking us back to Eisenhower-era Coney Island, and all the fun of the fair. In truth, there’s precious little fun anywhere, as a precarious love triangle develops between domestic drudge Ginny (Kate Winslet), her brutish husband Humpty (Jim Belushi) and dishy, literature-loving lifeguard Mickey (Justin Timberlake).
Further complicating this uneasy situation are Ginny’s young son by her first marriage, whose twin enthusiasms are movies and pyromania, and Humpty’s grown-up daughter from his first marriage, sweet-natured Carolina (Juno Temple), who has been estranged from her father for years, after eloping with a gangster.
Now that she’s no longer married to the mob, Humpty welcomes her back.
But her ex-husband’s menacing associates (Steve Schirripa and Tony Sirico from The Sopranos, not exactly stretching themselves) are looking for her. Meanwhile, to complicate matters even further, Mickey falls for Carolina, clouding Ginny’s hopes for a brighter future.
It’s a perfectly watchable film, but oddly devoid of jauntiness or wit; in fact, with Humpty thundering around boorishly in his vest it’s as if Allen is trying to make his own version of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Moreover, Timberlake is miscast, and his narrations direct to camera manage to be both clunky and twee.
As for the bigger issue of how we’re meant to feel about watching Woody Allen films now that Hollywood seems to have come down on the side of Dylan Farrow, who has accused her adoptive father of molesting her, I’ll confine myself to judging the art, not the artist.