Blue Jasmine (B+ or 3/4 stars)
As 'Blue Jasmine' (written/directed by Woody Allen) opens, we witness a svelte blonde woman in her early 40s rambling on & on & ON to a lady sitting next to her on a plane. She can't stop talking. Her eyes dart around nervously. And anyone near her can tell that she's having some personal crisis. This is Jasmine (Cate Blanchett). And we soon find out that she has lost everything (her Park Avenue home, Hamptons mansion, jewelry, social status in Manhattan society). Along with bouts of incessant rambling, our titular socialite also relies on vodka & xanax to get through the day. See, everything went downhill for her when her husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), a philandering, Bernie Madoff-type, went to jail for his fraudulent finance deals - having cost friends & relatives large amounts of $$ along the way.
Desperate to recover, she jets off with her Louis Vuitton bags to see her also-adopted sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a lowly grocery clerk who lives in San Francisco, divorced from Augie (a fun Andrew Dice Clay) & currently dating Chili (the always amusing Bobby Cannavale), a mechanic who Jasmine naturally disapproves of. Squabbles with Ginger aside, Jasmine moves in, pursues interior design as a career, & meets a suave, if somewhat smarmy political hopeful in Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard). But Jasmine's self-esteem couldn't be lower, & she resorts to fabricating all sorts of stories about herself to regain the elite social status that she once enjoyed with scuzzball Hal. While watching her whirlwind courtship with Dwight, I got the gradual sense that things may not end well. Drama ensues.
Through flashbacks, 'Blue Jasmine' shows how this woman was lured into amazing wealth/privilege by a charming scuzzball. We learn as we go what Jasmine knew & didn't know about her husband's shady dealings. We've seen this kind of plot before -- there's nothing groundbreaking going on. But Woody Allen's direction is as smooth & intuitive about human nature as ever. His dialogue is quick-witted & fun (if sounding too literate, at times. Verbose). But I must commend Allen for jamming in so much content & incident within his typically short films (98 minutes). Any other director may have needed an extra 15-20 minutes of running time to get all of the necessary content in/executed. (Most of) the conversations come across realistically. And the actors bring this material to life perfectly.
Cate Blanchett is a tour-de-force as our anti-heroine, Jasmine. Not only is her performance emotionally exhausting, but it must have been quite physically taxing, as well. Her eyes are perpetually red or crying. Her physical demeanor is almost constantly stressed, strained, or stooped. Her ability to go from a state of mind that is normal & lucid one minute to completely delusional & batsh*t crazy the next is marvelous. One moment, we loathe her, the next, we pity her. Woody Allen has imbued Blanchett with all the neurotic, unstable tendencies that we've seen from him time & time again - and she's more than up to the task. Since she broke out in 1998, Blanchett has become one of my favorite actresses. And I feel that this multi-layered, difficult role & performance is truly one of her very best.
Bobby Cannavale's performance as Chili is played for laughs. But he's also an interesting character -- he truly loves Ginger, but can't quite figure out how to prove it. Sally Hawkins is fantastic as the comfortable-in-her-own-skin sister. But she also wants to be loved and to BE in love. After Ginger starts to believe Jasmine's caustic assessment of Chili, she takes a chance on a new man (Louis C.K.), who preys on her vulnerability. I just feel that Hawkins nailed this type of character. Ginger knows her lot in life & tries to make the best of it -- something that Jasmine should, but cannot do! I also enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg as a creepy dentist who hits on Jasmine. I wasn't wild about the late-breaking Dwight character who just sweeps in, accepts Jasmine at face value, & asks for her hand. The plotline felt clunky/contrived. That said, this kind of subplot conceit (to keep character arcs moving) is a staple of Woody Allen films. So I suppose I can accept it {haha}.
This sharp character study of a disgraced, discarded trophy wife is funny, but also chilling. In other words, 'Blue Jasmine' has moments of insightful humor. I laughed an awful lot. And yet, this is a surprisingly heavy dramatic motion picture with sobering bouts of sadness that permeate the screen. It's an unsettling film about class tensions, woes of the rich, & a woman unhinged. I expect (and hope for) the character of Jasmine to bounce back to a version of herself that will get her by in life. She's not a sympathetic character by any means (snobbish, self-absorbed, obliviously condescending to people around her). And yet, Jasmine is not of sound mind & body SO often that you can't help feeling something for her in the end. God only knows what will come of her after the screen goes black.
Desperate to recover, she jets off with her Louis Vuitton bags to see her also-adopted sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a lowly grocery clerk who lives in San Francisco, divorced from Augie (a fun Andrew Dice Clay) & currently dating Chili (the always amusing Bobby Cannavale), a mechanic who Jasmine naturally disapproves of. Squabbles with Ginger aside, Jasmine moves in, pursues interior design as a career, & meets a suave, if somewhat smarmy political hopeful in Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard). But Jasmine's self-esteem couldn't be lower, & she resorts to fabricating all sorts of stories about herself to regain the elite social status that she once enjoyed with scuzzball Hal. While watching her whirlwind courtship with Dwight, I got the gradual sense that things may not end well. Drama ensues.
Through flashbacks, 'Blue Jasmine' shows how this woman was lured into amazing wealth/privilege by a charming scuzzball. We learn as we go what Jasmine knew & didn't know about her husband's shady dealings. We've seen this kind of plot before -- there's nothing groundbreaking going on. But Woody Allen's direction is as smooth & intuitive about human nature as ever. His dialogue is quick-witted & fun (if sounding too literate, at times. Verbose). But I must commend Allen for jamming in so much content & incident within his typically short films (98 minutes). Any other director may have needed an extra 15-20 minutes of running time to get all of the necessary content in/executed. (Most of) the conversations come across realistically. And the actors bring this material to life perfectly.
Cate Blanchett is a tour-de-force as our anti-heroine, Jasmine. Not only is her performance emotionally exhausting, but it must have been quite physically taxing, as well. Her eyes are perpetually red or crying. Her physical demeanor is almost constantly stressed, strained, or stooped. Her ability to go from a state of mind that is normal & lucid one minute to completely delusional & batsh*t crazy the next is marvelous. One moment, we loathe her, the next, we pity her. Woody Allen has imbued Blanchett with all the neurotic, unstable tendencies that we've seen from him time & time again - and she's more than up to the task. Since she broke out in 1998, Blanchett has become one of my favorite actresses. And I feel that this multi-layered, difficult role & performance is truly one of her very best.
Bobby Cannavale's performance as Chili is played for laughs. But he's also an interesting character -- he truly loves Ginger, but can't quite figure out how to prove it. Sally Hawkins is fantastic as the comfortable-in-her-own-skin sister. But she also wants to be loved and to BE in love. After Ginger starts to believe Jasmine's caustic assessment of Chili, she takes a chance on a new man (Louis C.K.), who preys on her vulnerability. I just feel that Hawkins nailed this type of character. Ginger knows her lot in life & tries to make the best of it -- something that Jasmine should, but cannot do! I also enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg as a creepy dentist who hits on Jasmine. I wasn't wild about the late-breaking Dwight character who just sweeps in, accepts Jasmine at face value, & asks for her hand. The plotline felt clunky/contrived. That said, this kind of subplot conceit (to keep character arcs moving) is a staple of Woody Allen films. So I suppose I can accept it {haha}.
This sharp character study of a disgraced, discarded trophy wife is funny, but also chilling. In other words, 'Blue Jasmine' has moments of insightful humor. I laughed an awful lot. And yet, this is a surprisingly heavy dramatic motion picture with sobering bouts of sadness that permeate the screen. It's an unsettling film about class tensions, woes of the rich, & a woman unhinged. I expect (and hope for) the character of Jasmine to bounce back to a version of herself that will get her by in life. She's not a sympathetic character by any means (snobbish, self-absorbed, obliviously condescending to people around her). And yet, Jasmine is not of sound mind & body SO often that you can't help feeling something for her in the end. God only knows what will come of her after the screen goes black.