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Cate Blanchett dominates the screen in Blue Jasmine |
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Cate Blanchett (Jasmine Francis), Sally Hawkins
(Ginger), Alec Baldwin (Hal Francis), Peter Sarsgaard (Dwight Westlake), Louis
CK (Al Munsinger), Andrew Dice Clay (Augie), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), Michael Stuhlbarg
(Dr Flicker), Aldren Ehrenreich (Danny Francis)

Allen’s film, easily one of his best of his troubled later
years, is a modernised remix of Streetcar
Named Desire. After a Ponzi scheme scandal leads to her husband Hal’s (Alec
Baldwin) arrest and suicide, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) finds herself landing in
the poor end of San Francisco and sharing a house with her sister Ginger (Sally
Hawkins). Ginger’s marriage to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) collapsed after Hal’s
dirty dealings destroyed their lottery win landfall. Jasmine, teetering on the
edge of a nervous breakdown, living half in the present and half in an imagined
version of her own past, soon clashes with Ginger’s new boyfriend Chili (Bobby
Cannavale) and eventually finds hope for a second chance with diplomat Dwight
(Peter Sarsgaard) who is oblivious to her background.
The parallels between Blue
Jasmine and Streetcar should be
pretty clear to anyone reading that summary, and Allen draws some neat
modernisation parallels (and thankfully, and wisely, drops the rape plotline
that ends that play) between the two. Placing Blanche/Jasmine as the trophy
wife of a corrupt businessman, who has shut her eyes to his dealings and let
her own intellect drain away in shallow frippery, works really well. Not least
dramatizing very well the cultural shift from this extreme wealth (detailed in
a series of cleverly interwoven flashbacks) to the relative poverty of normal
life.
But the film really works from the super-intelligent,
hyper-brilliant, eye-catching wonderfulness of Cate Blanchett in the lead role.
This is one of those performances for the ages, a tour-de-force of fragility,
self-pity, self-deception, hostility, undirected anger, desperation and pain
that dominates and shapes the entire movie. Blanchett is particularly effective
because she never, ever overplays the role, but let’s these complex,
contradictory emotions play constantly behind her eyes and slowly seem to
dribble out until they dominate her entire body. Several times, Allen plants
the camera and allows us to simply watch Blanchett go through various stages of
mental collapse in front of our very eyes, with this amazing actress able to
seemingly fall apart in slow motion in front of us.
Jasmine is a complex and fascinating character, in some ways
hugely unsympathetic. She’s a massive snob, she certainly feels the world owes
her something (she flies into San Francisco first class complaining she has had
to sell everything just to make ends meet, while dragging Louis Vuitton luggage
behind her), she lies when she needs to and treats everyone around her with a
slight air of condescension. But she’s also
incredibly vulnerable, and carrying a great deal of guilt and pain, as
well as only barely able to deal not only with the loss of her privileged
lifestyle, but also her growing (but denied) realisation that the price of the
lifestyle wasn’t worth the having it.
The film throws her into a series of contexts that show her
at her best and worst, as victim and as fantasist. Getting a job at a dentist’s
reception desk – a job she seems to only barely have the patience or aptitude
for – she is forced to see off the unwelcome advances of her creepy boss
(played with a passive aggressive sleaziness by Michael Stuhlbarg) with horror.
Later though, she wilfully deceives Dwight (a fine performance of assured
arrogance by Peter Sarsgaard) about her background and character. She is partly
right in her assessment of her sister Ginger having a very low opinion of
herself, so only pairing herself with men who treat her badly; but Chili is
also right about her having no regard or time for her sister when she was
wealthy.
The use of flashbacks throughout the film works very well to
show us Jasmine before and after her economic crash. What’s fascinating is that
her fragility is an ever-present, kept suppressed under a shower of gifts, but
quickly coming to the fore when Hal’s (has there been a better role for Baldwin
than this jovial, greedy cheat?) serial infidelity is bought to her attention.
It also serves to remind us to keep Jasmine at a certain distance, her own
evaluations of what her past life was like frequently not squaring with the
version we see.
All of this hinges on Blanchett’s brilliant work, but she’s
not alone in delivering a fine performance. As her blousy sister, moving like a
weathervane from person to person, changing her opinions quickly depending on
her recent experiences, Sally Hawkins is possibly at her best here as well.
Andrew Dice Clay is excellent as an honest Joe who hovers over the film like an
object of destiny. Bobby Cannavale does some very good work as a feckless but
sort-of honest Stanley Kowalski.
Allen’s direction is calm and almost in awe of Blanchett,
and that’s fair enough because whatever you look at, it comes back to her
striking genius in the film. Blue Jasmine
may remove some of the depth that Blanche has (with her life of pain and guilt
in the play’s backstory) but it substitutes that with a gripping exploration of
a long-running mental collapse that is so movingly and superbly brought to life
by Blanchett you can’t help but be engrossed by it.
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