Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett makes her way through Woody Allen's new drama, Blue Jasmine, like a lost soul.  She is shattered (both emotionally and mentally) and defeated, yet still holding onto the small glimmer of her old life that she used to have.  Her character, Jasmine (her real name is Jeanette), used to be a New York socialite, with a wealthy husband (Alec Baldwin), and a life that revolved around "beautiful" friends, lavish dinner parties, and weekends in private resorts.  As we witness her former life in flashbacks, we see the events that led to where she is as the film opens.

Jasmine's life now finds her headed to San Francisco to live with her less well-to-do sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), who leads a simple life working as a grocer, and hangs out with blue-collar men that Jasmine can barely hide her contempt toward whenever she is around them.  The differences in lifestyle and values have largely kept the two women distant, but now that Jasmine has lost everything she was familiar with, she is forced to rely on help from Ginger for the first time in her life.  Turns out Jasmine's former husband was a Bernie Madoff-type, and was eventually indicted.  The government took everything he had, and Jasmine now finds herself in her current situation, although she still holds an air of superiority over just about everyone she meets.  The first time she sets foot in Ginger's modest apartment, Jasmine reacts as if she is entering a slum, while still grudgingly admitting that the place has a "casual charm".

This may just be the saddest and most unflinching film that Woody Allen has ever made, even if it does bare some of his unmistakable film characteristics.  While there are some small moments of humor here and there, this really is a story of the slow mental destruction of a woman who cannot handle the sharp turn her life has taken.  Jasmine seems to slowly be losing her grip on reality, as she finds herself talking to no one in particular when she's out on the streets, or gazing off into space, almost as if she is watching memories of better times on a movie screen in her mind.  Of course, as the flashbacks of her former Manhattan lifestyle tells us, those "better times" were all a lie.  Her husband not only had affairs with multiple women, which Jasmine was too blind to see (or, perhaps, she chose to ignore), but made money off of the suffering of others with his financial scheme.  She also has an adult son (from her husband's past marriage) who refuses to speak to her since her husband was arrested by the FBI.  We get the sense that Jasmine clings to these memories, not out of fondness, but out of desperation and the illusion that she was happy back then.

Much like Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (which seems to have been a big source of inspiration for Allen here), Jasmine must deal with the harsh reality of working for a living, while also dealing with Ginger's frequently crude and harsh working-class boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale).  She was barely able to tolerate Ginger's ex-husband (Andrew Dice Clay, in a surprising and moving dramatic performance) in her old life, and now that she has to live with her sister's current boyfriend around all the time, it makes it all the more difficult.  Jasmine does try to better herself, taking a computer course, and even taking a job as a receptionist for a local dentist.  But we get the impression that Jasmine's heart does not lie with these possibilities.  It is not until she begins to romance a wealthy Washington diplomat (Peter Sarsgaard) that there seem to be a glimmer of hope in Jasmine's eyes.  But even that hope is dimmed by the fact that Jasmine refuses to let go of her own past, and is essentially living a lie.

Blue Jasmine is powerful enough simply through the story it tells, and the themes that Allen's screenplay uses for his shattered heroine.  But, it is the performances that really lift it up to being something truly special.  As Jasmine, Blanchett is basically giving us two performances here, both of them extraordinary.  In the flashbacks, she is confident, content, and secure in this wealthy and private little world she has created for herself.  And in the present, when we find her bitter, cracked, and slowly descending into mental illness, she is tragic - a faded woman who is showing early signs of falling apart, but she is not yet there.  The entire cast here is superb, with some wonderful dramatic turns by usually comic actors, such as the previously mentioned Clay, and Louis C.K. as a man who briefly dates Ginger.  Other standouts include Alec Baldwin, who has an oily charm in the flashback scenes, and Sally Hawkins, who gives Ginger such a sweet innocence, we can't stand to see her get hurt as often as she does during the story.

Much like Match Point (Woody Allen's wonderful 2005 dramatic thriller about murder), this is a film about people who once had it all, and don't know how to handle their loss.  Blue Jasmine isn't quite as dark as that earlier film, but it is a lot quieter and sadder.  We know what's going to happen to these people, and even though we hope they will be happy, we know that for some characters, there is only pain waiting for most of them.  What makes this film great is not only do we feel for these characters, but we also sometimes wish we could pull them right off the screen, and help them.

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