Blue Jasmine
It’s hard to put Woody Allen’s latest film, “Blue Jasmine,” on the same level of some of his best films of the past decade, most especially his 2011 classic, “Midnight in Paris,” but there’s a centerpiece performance by Cate Blanchett that is impossible to ignore, as it’s the finest single piece of acting in any Woody Allen film since 1994’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The writing of the film on a whole isn’t really that great, but Blanchett, who might have to find room on her mantle for another Oscar (she previously won for 2004’s “The Aviator”), elevates the material, and the film as a whole, to a level of greatness it might not have achieved otherwise.
Blanchett stars as Jasmine, a socialite whose life is in ruins after her husband (Alec Baldwin) is indicted for financial fraud, and kills himself in prison. He was also cheating on her, which was just one, more twist of the screw for Jasmine, who suffered a mental breakdown, and now, has nothing. She spends a lot of time taking pills, talking to herself in public, and trying to put on a brave, prim face for others. Broke and destitute, she goes out to San Francisco to live with her adoptive sister (the wonderful Sally Hawkins) and her two kids in their small apartment, where her sister’s ex-husband (Andrew Dice Clay, in a surprisingly rounded performance) still holds resentments over the money he was convinced to invest in one of Jasmine’s husband’s shady business deals. She still tries to hold on to the life she lost, but things aren’t quite so simple when reality hits her hard.
This is one of Woody Allen’s more dramatic offerings. It’s not necessarily on the level of “Match Point” in that respect, but it’s definitely not as light and breezy as something like “Midnight in Paris” or “Vicky Christina Barcelona,” by comparison. The key comparison point would probably be his underrated 2005 film, “Melinda & Melinda,” which was also anchored by a tour de performance by an actress (in that case, Radha Mitchell), and had an air of melancholy that tempered the laughs in Allen’s screenplay. This film also seems to be split in two, with Jasmine’s new life driving the narrative, while we also get a picture of what her life was like before it was turned upside down by betrayal and deceit, leading to a nervous breakdown she still is reeling from. Pain always seems to be a key part of Allen’s films, and in “Blue Jasmine,” it’s front-and-center as Jasmine is recovering from a shock that will probably remain vivid for the rest of her life. There are a lot of times when we don’t really like Jasmine, but can’t help but root for her, the more we see of what lead to her emotional downfall. This is especially true when she goes to a local party, dragging her sister with her (who meets a promising suitor in Louis C.K.’s sound engineer), and she meets a U.S. ambassador (Peter Saarsgard) who could offer her the life she had again, but without the same outcome. Unfortunately, Jasmine tells some untruths about her life that will come to haunt her, leading to a final sequence of Jasmine, alone, walking around San Francisco, still trying to talk herself into feeling better. Though she’s surrounded by wonderful actors and acting (special kudos to Hawkins, Dice Clay, and Louie C.K.), it’s Cate Blanchett, in a fragile, and emotionally unsettling performance, that lifts “Blue Jasmine” from just being an average Woody Allen film, and into a pretty great one.
