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| 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been replaced by vodka in disposable cups and remedial computer classes.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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