“Blue Jasmine” Written and Directed by Woody Allen

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DAN WALKER ON FILM

Cast:

Cate Blanchett (“Elizabeth”, Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for “The Aviator”, “I’m Not There”)

Alec Baldwin (“Married to the Mob”, “The Hunt for Red October”, “Glengarry Glen Ross”)

Sally Hawkins (“Cassandra’s Dream”, “Happy Go-Lucky”, “An Education”)

Bobby Cannavale (“The Station Agent”, “Shall We Dance”, “Win Win”)

Peter Sarsgaard (“Garden State”, “Kinsey”, “An Education”)

Running Time:  98 Minutes

I love autumn and associate two things with it; football season and Woody Allen movies.  I always wait until September to watch my Woody Allen movie collection, at which point I try to watch all of them by the end of the year, culminating with “Radio Days”, “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Everyone Says I Love You.”  Seeing “Blue Jasmine” was a perfect way to kick off my autumn.

I knew this movie had a limited release at the end of July but only last night realized it was playing locally so I was at the first showing I could see today.  The movie confirmed two things for me:

1-The dread I have for the day Woody Allen stops making movies

2-Cate Blanchett is a great, great actress

The opening scene shows Jasmine (Blanchett) on a plane seemingly conversing with her elderly female seat neighbor.  We find out otherwise when the two are at baggage claim at San Francisco International Airport and the elderly woman explains to her husband that Jasmine talked about herself to herself the entire flight.

Jasmine lived the privileged life of a Park Avenue wife with her white collar crook husband Hal (Baldwin), for whom cheating in every selfish way possible was a way of life.  The two threw the swankiest dinner parties (right) and held charity benefits and lived life at the highest social level in Manhattan and the Hamptons.  Jasmine’s background is explained in flashbacks and we find out, little by little, how she ends up penniless, without a home and husband, estranged from her son, an ever-unraveling emotional mess, and a nonstop Xanax depository.  Jasmine is in San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), whose Mission District apartment and life couldn’t be farther from Ginger’s former lifestyle, as Jasmine tries to begin a new life for herself.  Jasmine and Ginger were both adopted and Ginger’s resentment of their foster parents’ favoritism toward Jasmine, something you think would dictate the relationship between siblings for life, is only briefly touched upon.  The movie is absolutely engaging and it’s almost entirely attributable to Blanchett.  A mathematical explanation looks like this:

great actress + great role + great director = phenomenal performance

All the great female performances in Allen movies flashed before me as I watched “Blue Jasmine”:  The Oscar-winning performances of Diane Keaton (“Annie Hall”), Dianne Wiest (“Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Bullets Over Broadway”) and Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”) as well as the powerful performances in his other movies including Judy Davis (“Husbands and Wives”), Angelica Huston (“Crimes and Misdemeanors”) and all of Mia Farrow’s underrated performances.  If a female lead performance is more deserving of this year’s Best Actress Oscar, I want to see it.  I always thought it would be impossible for Blanchett to top her performance in Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 “Elizabeth” (left, she lost that Oscar to Gwynneth Paltrow for John Madden’s “Shakespeare in Love” and, in a bit of an irony, both films starred Joseph Feinnes and Geoffrey Rush), but this one might have done it.  She won her Oscar for doing a Katherine Hepburn impersonation in “The Aviator”.  Because Hepburn’s mannerisms and diction were so distinctive, portraying her doesn’t give an actor any choice BUT to imitate her which on one hand is easy but on the other hand has to be unsatisfying because the actor can’t contribute much more to the portrayal.  In “Blue Jasmine”, Blanchett fleshes out Allen’s character, which was very nuanced and had to be tough emotionally.  Jasmine’s fragility and instability reminded me of Samantha Morton’s nervous breakdown portrayal of Mary Stuart in Kapur’s “Elizabeth:  The Golden Age” (right), in which Blanchett starred.  There’s one scene, toward the end of “Blue Jasmine”, where Blanchett possesses an expression you couldn’t imagine she could get out of her face until you see it.
Often, when an actor gives a great performance, other actors playing off that lead benefit, as Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear did with Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets”, in which Hunt and Nicholson won Oscars and Kinnear was Oscar-nominated.  In “Blue Jasmine”, however, no one else stands a chance of shining, and everyone else’s performance is only a formality compared to Blanchett’s, although Cannavale puts all his charm and heart into the movie’s second-best role as the emphatic, romantic, and forgiving Chili, Ginger’s boyfriend (below, with Max Casella).  Chili’s adversarial relationship with Jasmine is much more attributable to Jasmine than Chili.  Ginger had been married to blue-collar Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) but the two divorced after Hal talks them ─ in the seductive setting of his Hamptons home (above) but against Augie’s better judgement ─ into investing $200,000 Augie won in a lottery into Hal’s fraudulent business ventures on the promise of a 20% return.  The worst-case scenario happens, ruining Augie and Ginger’s one shot at any financial success and results in their divorce.  Ginger is forgiving but Augie is not, and his chance opportunity to vent to Jasmine about his bitterness comes at the worst time for her and in front of the last person she wants to witness it as she tries to deceptively claw her way back into a livable existence.  Clay (left) doesn’t get much screen time and his performance isn’t a stretch but it’s fascinating to see him decades after his significance as a one-note and divisive comic and his familiar presence adds a nice touch to the film.  Sarsgaard (below with Blanchett) is in and out of the movie as Jasmine’s light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel love interest.  Baldwin’s performance seems generous in that it’s so understated, especially since most of his scenes are with Blanchett.

The film forces you to focus on Jasmine to figure out whether you want her to succeed or fail in her quest to resume a life.  She’s guiltless in her husband’s criminal activities (simply by turning a blind eye when it was convenient and she never read anything Hal asked her to sign), fragile, vulnerable, and victimized yet she’s unbending in lowering some of her Park Avenue standards and deceitful in the process of getting what she wants.  Especially when it comes to her opinion of and interaction with Chili, she has some very condescending, contemptuous, and hateful moments.

While we tend to associate Allen with comedy, it’s always been his thoughtful portrayals of people and their relationships (especially their flaws) I’ve always found most appealing in his movies.  “Blue Jasmine” is very intense in the way it delves into interpersonal relationships and it’s indicative of how sharp Allen’s insights are when it comes to them.  Where “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Husbands and Wives” were serious movies with comedic moments, I don’t remember laughing at any point in “Blue Jasmine”, a similarity it shares with Allen’s 2005 “Match Point” and, like “Match Point”, Allen does not appear in the film.

It’s good to see Allen, after filming in Europe (his only movie since 2005 not set in Europe was 2009’s “Whatever Works”), back in New York and, in the same film, going to San Francisco for the first time as a director since 1969’s “Take the Money and Run” (correct me if I’m wrong).

Allen’s writing, directing, and ability to keep himself fresh and get great performances out of his actors are as strong as ever but, again, this movie literally and metaphorically begins and ends with Blanchett’s performance, which continues even as the closing credits begin rolling in an ending unlike that of any Allen movie I’ve seen.

DPW

September 24, 2013

Having lived and worked in Manhattan and lived in the Bay Area and worked in San Francisco and being intimately familiar with The City, all those backdrops added value for me and were another reason I was riveted to the film.  It was enjoyable seeing San Francisco locations I recognized immediately; Potrero Hill, the Mission District, SOMA, the Marina District, Chinatown (right, with Blanchett, Casella, Cannavale, and Hawkins), and the Marin county cities of San Anselmo and Tiburon.  When Hal is arrested on Park Avenue, the landmark Seagram Building, where I worked for four years, is in the background.

I’m not sure if there is a significance that the three leads – Jasmine, Ginger, and Chili – are all named after things you can eat or drink.

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