After a side trip to Spain for VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, back to New York for WHATEVER WORKS, to London for YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, France for MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and Italy for FROM ROME WITH LOVE, Woody lands in San Francisco (with some Manhattan-set flashback) for his latest, the terrific drama BLUE JASMINE. Armed with a script full of memorable characters, Allen’s portrait of one woman’s unhinged fall from privilege and prosperity to depression and madness is anchored by a devastating lead performance by Kate Blanchett.
Jasmine (Blanchett) used to have it all, an upscale life of luxury and good times in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard. She’s suddenly penniless, blind-sided by the white collar financial crimes of her late husband Hal (Alec Baldwin in flashback), whose sleazy dealings she always turned a blind eye to. We first meet Jasmine on a plane, baring her soul to an annoyed fellow traveler, something she’ll do to strangers throughout the film. She lands in San Francisco armed with her designer suitcases at the doorstep of her working-class sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Despite Hal having squandered Ginger and her first husband Auggie’s (Andrew Dice Clay) desperately-needed lottery winnings, she offers Jasmine a place to stay. The sisters neither look nor act alike, both having been adopted by the same parents. Ginger has two sons from a first marriage to Auggie and a current fiancé Chili (Bobby Cannavale), a greasy goomba mechanic who sees right through Jasmine, who in turn continually refers to him as a ‘loser. Jasmine is a depressed woman who is unaccustomed to the lower class, living with noisy kids, and putting up with visits from Chili and his rough-edged pals. She goes to work as a receptionist for a lecherous dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and enrolls in a class to learn how to operate a computer so she can take an interior decorating license online. A chance meeting with a wealthy widowed diplomat (Peter Sarsgaard) looks like her ticket back to the privileged life she once know, if she can only keep her past from catching up with her.
Woody Allen has been cranking out a movie annually as long as I can remember and every few years critics latch on to his latest work and declare it his “best in years”. BLUE JASMINE really is. Allen deals here, as he does in most of his serious work, in class hatred, uncomfortable confrontations, and dysfunctional family conflict, but it lacks the heavy, Bergman-inspired gravity of some of Allen’s previous dramas like INTERIORS, SEPTEMBER, or ANOTHER WOMAN. The overheated premise proves perfect for Allen’s brand of stylized, poetic language. Even the uncouth Auggie and Chili naturally speak dialogue that sounds both composed and spontaneous. There are real dark turns in the film too, a mystery that depends upon the audience’s gradual discovery of what exactly happened to Hal.
Miss Blanchett is a riveting image, not just for the things she says but for the ravaged beauty and sadness she allows the camera to find in her face and clothes-horse figure. Constantly throwing back Xanax and martinis to cope, Blanchett performs emotional highs and lows, often within the same scene and her performance is really something to see. Jasmine is selfish and cruel and entitled yet the actress somehow generates a great deal of sympathy and the audience wants for her to find happiness. It’s a performance people will be talking about for a long time. It’s Blanchett’s show but there are so many good supporting performances in this film. Sally Hawkins is admirably down-to-earth as Ginger, who’s given a lot of screen time. Peter Sarsgaard scores as a too-good-to-be-true diplomat who may be the answer to Jasmine’s dreams as does Louis C.K. as Al, who might be Ginger’s step up from Chili. Andrew Dice Clay imbues Auggie with such humanity and sympathy that I can’t believe this is the same guy who was at the top of the stand-up game twenty years ago for reciting vulgar nursery rhymes. Only Michael Stuhlbarg as the dentist doesn’t fit so neatly into the puzzle. Until he makes his awkward advances, I didn’t understand why Jasmine wasn’t nicer to him.
Allen has made so many comedies that it is easy to insist that he make nothing else. Actually, he is as acute an author of serious dialogue as anyone now making films, and in BLUE JASMINE most of the real action goes on in his words as well as the shattering performance by Ms Blanchett. By turns witty, surprising, and heartbreaking, BLUE JASMINE is Woody Allen at the very top of his form and the best film I’ve seen this year.
5 of 5 Stars
BLUE JASMINE opens in St. Louis Friday, August 9th at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater
