Blue Jasmine (2013)

How did my life come to this?

Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen’s 48th film as a director, opens with bluesy piano/trumpet music, and credits in Allens’s now-familiar, trademark font. We see Cate Blanchett on a plane, talking the ear off the woman next to her. Blanchett plays the anxious and frazzled Jasmine. After a failed marriage to a rich financial swindler, she’s flying to S.F. to move in with her sister, and “start anew in the West.”

Crashing at her sister’s apartment is a considerable downgrade from her former Manhattan lifestyle. After a cab ride, Jasmine’s mortified to find her new digs located over a fast-food joint. She’s suffocated by its size, euphemistically calling it “homey.” Having already downsized once, she rhetorically asks “Can you believe I had to move out of my beautiful home, and take a place in Brooklyn?” She’s the type who claims she’s “tapped out,” but still flies 1st class. An over-sharer, she makes those around her (fellow travelers, strangers on a park bench, other partygoers, etc...) uncomfortable by incessantly forcing the intimate details of her life onto them.

Sally Hawkins is Ginger, the sister taking Jasmine in. She’s kind, generous, genuine, effervescent and charming—always smiling—almost the exact opposite of Jasmine. Sweet to a fault, as well as a caring and loving sister, Ginger’s never quite gotten beyond that period after college when you need roommates and ramen noodles in order to make the bills. She refers to her ex-husband Augie (Andrew “Dice” Clay) as “a contractor….a handyman.”. He’s schlubby but sensitive, a regular, blue-collar guy who isn’t cerebral, but means well.

The film’s told in intermittent flashback, jumping between the present (in San Francisco) and past (New York). During one flashback, we see both couples when they were still married. Jasmine and her high-finance husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) met at a party on Nantucket. They have a house in the Hamptons (one of many), where Ginger and Augie come to vacation. When the rich relatives name-drop high-end NY restaurants, the references are lost completely on their guests. In Jasmine and Hal’s condescending eyes, Ginger and Augie have wound up on the wrong side of the tracks.

Sipping gin and tonics around the pool one day, Ginger mentions Augie’s unexpectedly come into some money. He won the lottery, and for the first time in his life suddenly has some leverage. Between that and the little he’s managed to save, Augie wants to start his own business. However, when Hal hears “money,” he’s like moths to flame. He assures Augie that he can turn the newfound wealth into even more. Surrounded by her sister’s affluence, Ginger urges Augie to let Hal invest it.

Later, while out sightseeing in the city, Ginger by chance spies Hal passionately kissing another woman on the street. What’s she to do? Should she tell her sis that Hal’s a cheat (and risk the consequences), or keep quiet and leave Jasmine to her own devices? After too many drinks at a fancy party, Ginger drops a not too subtle hint to Jasmine that she better keep an eye on her husband. Comfortable in her big house, designer clothes and expensive Chanel handbag, Jasmine chooses ignorance.

After establishing all that, movie winds along its path. New romantic interests pursued. Jobs are found and lost. Characters try to pretend all is fine. Ultimately we find out what happened to both marriages. Jasmine tries to keep her former life a secret, with disastrous results. It’s all fairly standard Allen fare. But really entertaining stuff, too.  

Blue Jasmine has some of the madcap farce and unlikely coincidence that Allen’s famous for. And while there is humor—most provided by Bobby Cannavale (The Station Agent, Win, Win, Romance and Cigarettes), as Ginger’s new, even-more-blue-collar boyfriend Chili—for the most part, it’s a serious drama. People’s lives and marriages have been ruined by bad financial decisions, infidelity and corruption. These are no laughing matters, at least not here.

But the movie is dominated by Blanchett’s Jasmine. She is restless, jittery, and seems perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In addition to an ever-present bottle of Xanax, she self medicates with vodka and complaining. Her unsettling habit of thinking the deepest, most personal feelings and details of her life out loud—to no one in particular—keeps most at arm’s length. She dresses and carries herself like a wealthy, well-cared-for woman, even when she takes a job as a dentist’s receptionist. Unable to release the trappings of her former upscale life and accept her new station, she’s detached from reality. Self absorbed, reckless and self involved, she recalls a former Allen creation, Melinda from the eponymous Melinda & Melinda.

Blanchett’s performance has rightly been highly praised (and nominated for an Oscar; she’s rumored to be the front runner). Her fragility and lack of self control is like watching someone walk a tightrope. At any moment it could all come tumbling down. When I watched the dvd’s supplemental material, the difference between Blanchett in press interviews, and her on-screen persona, is striking. In real life she comes across as confident, worldly, composed, mature, and prepossessing. There’s no hint of the fretful, insecure, panic-stricken Jasmine she plays in the film (perhaps it’s just the Australian accent?)

The rest of the film’s cast is likewise fantastic. Hawkins (also Oscar-nominated) and Cannavale are terrifically affecting. It’s amazing to see the same actor who played the ruthlessly violent Gyp Rosetti in Boardwalk Empire, plead for his girlfriend’s return in a grocery-store produce department. Even minor roles are played by unusually skilled actors. Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead, Kinsey, Shattered Glass and Garden State) is an erudite ambassador, who becomes Jasmine’s post-Hal love interest. Michael Stuhlbarg (also Boardwalk Empire, as well as the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, Scorsese’s Hugo and Men In Black 3) is the hapless dentist, who can’t take a hint. And Louis CK (American Hustle, The Invention of Lying, Louis) is amiable and endearing as Al, Ginger’s romantic life raft.

Blue Jasmine is “serious” Woody Allen (as opposed to comedic). It leans more towards Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, and Match Point, than Bananas, Love and Death, Small Time Crooks, Mighty Aphrodite or Manhattan Murder Mystery. But like all his work, it’s insightful about the human condition: our fretful nature, fickle and fleeting romantic interests, and the problems we inevitably and inescapably cause ourselves. I’m biased, and perhaps in the minority; I think all Allen’s movies are worth seeing. (I don’t subscribe to the notion that he’s ever “fallen off,” or “finally returned to form”). While some pictures are surely more enjoyable than others, almost without exception they’re superior to all but a few of what Hollywood releases today. Blue Jasmine included. It may not be Annie Hall or Manhattan (few are), but it still provides a great return on your investment.