When I feel Woody Allen is at his best, his movies are memorable
(read here Annie Hall or Midnight in Paris); when they fail for me, they fail
spectacularly (read To Rome With Love). Blue Jasmine is wonderfully on the mark and
Cate Blanchett owns the title role.
From the beginning, as we watch Jasmine arrive in the
airport talking to an older woman who we might mistakenly assume is her
companion, we learn that Jasmine is a woman on the edge. She is Woody Allen’s
modern incarnation of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named
Desire, complete with dead husband, sister she can run to, sister's loutish boyfriend with his
card-playing chronies, and a lost estate, coming pennilessly to seek refuge
from the only person who will have her. New Orleans and Belle Reve become San
Francisco and New York.
Blanchett is transcendent. Watching the subtleties of her
performance, I regret never having seen her play Blanche onstage as she did in
Australia and New York.
A fine cast supports Blanchett, including Alec Baldwin as her unfaithful husband; Peter
Sarsgaard, her only chance for a new life; Sally Hawkins as her step-sister
Ginger; Andrew Dice Clay as Ginger’s ex-husband, Bobby Cannavale as Chili (the
surrogate Stanley), and Louis C.K. as Ginger’s passion. While modernizing the
plot twists, Allen plays on his oft-repeated theme of men being pond-scum,
always unfaithful to women. He also stresses the idea of how lies only hurt us
in the end.
The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, perhaps mimicking the
fragile state of Jasmine’s mind, since she is a woman who talks to herself and
lives closer and closer to a world of total mental breakdown.
By the end of the
film, as is true with Williams’ Blanche, we feel great pity for the tragedy of
Blanche’s life.
Rush to see Allen and Blanchett at their best.
Blue Jasmine (2013) *****
This is a great interview by Cate on working with Woody Allen.
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