By Colin Fraser
Blue Jasmine might not be a minted Woody Allen classic in the vein of Annie Hall, Manhattan, or Hannah And Her Sisters, but it is without question a modern classic, and stands as the iconic writer/director’s best work in years.
Jasmine (the Oscar winning Cate Blanchett) is in San Francisco hiding from a collapsing life on the pretext of visiting her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Not that she’d admit it, but the once extraordinarily wealthy woman needs the support of her working class sibling, with Jasmine’s cashed-up husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin) jailed for fraud. Compounding her plunge down society’s ladder is a mental disposition that, fragile at best, has been taken to breaking point by this abrupt change in circumstance.
So starts Woody Allen’s poignant drama, which finds the director in a strangely abrasive mood. That said, it’s one of his most honest and incisive films ever. It turns on Blanchett, who effortlessly captures the wretchedness of Jasmine’s wild mood swings with an inevitability that is both touching and upsetting. “When the phone call comes, ‘Do you want to work with Cate?’ the only answer is, ‘Yes,’” Alec Baldwin told FilmInk upon the film’s release. “Woody doesn’t pay you any money. You go there for the glory, but that’s okay. It’s not about money. You go to work for that. And Woody really put her through the machine, because she’s so talented. Take after take after take of very, very exhaustive emotional scenes. I sat there at the end of the day and thought, ‘She is unbelievable.’ She’s a great actress.”
Rather than let caricature reign, as so many of Allen’s leads have been willing to do, Cate Blanchett turns Jasmine into a fully dysfunctional human being with all the curt behaviours of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It’s a knock out performance, and Blanchett is ably supported by Sally Hawkins, who brings tremendous depth to their fractured relationship.
How the seventy-something Woody Allen could possibly understand, much less relate, the trials of sibling sisters half his age negotiating mental illness is unknown, yet that’s exactly what he’s achieved. As the story jumps back and forth in time, with the veracity of events changing according to Jasmine’s state of mind, Allen’s multi-layered approach touches on issues of truth, denial, and accountability, and questions our own reaction in times of need. There are moments of great humour, but suffice to say, Blue Jasmine is not an ordinary Woody Allen movie – it’s an extraordinary one.
