"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, April 14, 2014

Blue Jasmine (2013, PG-13)

doubleexposurejournal.com

*Disclaimer: More Woody Allen. Seriously, eff this guy.*

This Woody Allen film is, by all appearances, the love child of A Streetcar Named Desire and Bernie Madoff.  As is just a teeny bit within his wheelhouse, the movie is a close-up character study of a Fascinating Woman, filled with great performances and you-could-just-die scenery.

 
Jasmine (formerly Jeanette) has arrived at San Francisco in disgrace.  Her late husband was a cheat, crook, and all around snake-in-the-grass, and the government has seized Jasmine’s Park Avenue way of life along with her husband’s assets.  Gone are the cocktail parties and European sailing excursions; they’ve been replaced by vodka in disposable cups and remedial computer classes.  Despite her assertions that she’s determined to “make it work” and get her life on track, Jasmine is a boozing, pill-popping mess who never stops reminiscing to no one in particular about the good old days.  The film flits dizzyingly in and out of flashback alongside its leading lady.
 
Jasmine’s new life brings her into the world of her sister Ginger, a divorced grocery-bagger with two kids and rose-tinted taste in men.  Though Jasmine wanted nothing to do with her sister when she was on top, Ginger graciously takes the newly-impoverished basket case in.  The criticisms – of her apartment, her job, and her boyfriend – begin almost immediately, and matters between the two women are clearly primed for detonation.
 
Obviously, Cate Blanchett’s award-winning performance as Jasmine is the main force to be reckoned with.  She is alternately grotesquely self-absorbed and heartbreakingly vulnerable, a definite can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her star turn.  Sally Hawkins, who I know best as Anne Elliot from the ITV version of Persuasion a few years back, is also terrific.  Her Ginger has a big but complicated heart, and the scenes between the sisters positively crackle.  On the gentlemen’s side, Alec Baldwin is suitably wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing-ish as Jasmine’s former husband, and Bobby Cannavale (I’m his fan forever after The Station Agent and his stupendous Joe) does a great job as Ginger’s boyfriend.
 
While I can’t claim huge swathes of Woody Allen knowledge, I’ve enjoyed everything of his I’ve seen.  Blue Jasmine hasn’t unseated Midnight in Paris as my personal favorite, but I think it’s probably a better film overall:  a better story told with stronger focus.  It knows precisely what its tale is, and it tells it very well.
 
Warnings
 
Some swearing and sexual content.  Copious amounts of drinking and prescription-drug abuse.

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