Reviewed: “Blue Jasmine”
Cate Blanchett is extraordinary in the latest from Woody Allen
Blue Jasmine, the new film from Woody Allen, is a bleak, serio-comic portrait of a wealthy Manhattan social climber who finds herself broke and homeless after her crooked, Bernie Maddoff-esque financier husband is arrested for shady dealings and all of their money and assets are seized by the government. Reduced to her fancy wardrobe and a vintage set of Louis Vuitton luggage, the titular character — played with incredible ferocity and humanity by Cate Blanchett — now broke and homeless, absconds to San Francisco to stay temporarily with her adoptive sister, Ginger. Ginger is a single mother of two who works in a grocery store, leads a modest life and has a penchant for guys who are somewhat rough around the edges. Cringe-inducing mishaps ensue as a mentally unstable Jasmine tries (and largely fails) to adapt to her new reality as a member of the American working class even as she maintains as firm a grasp on the memory of her former privilege as she does on her Birkin handbag, all the while showing little regard for Ginger’s feelings and butting heads with Ginger’s brutish, grease-monkey boyfriend, Chili (played by a life-giving Bobby Canavale).
It’s not a new story. Blanchett’s Jasmine French (she changed her name from Jeanette to Jasmine) is directly descended from Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’ seminal southern belle in A Streetcar Named Desire. Like Blanche, Jasmine was once the member of a privileged elite but has recently seen her glory diminished. Like Blanche, Jasmine, destitute and in a gravely unhinged emotional and mental state, deposits herself in the home of her less socially successful sister, where she too begins to pick apart her sister’s life, to look upon her choices with scrutiny and disdain, and to haggle with and denigrate her unpolished (though ultimately, and perhaps more so in Chili’s case than Streetcar’s Stanley Kowalski,good-hearted) paramour. Like Blanche, Jasmine is given to waxing nostalgic about her former glory and pitying herself for her current hell — and also of keeping certain cards close to the chest. The story of Jasmine’s downfall is intentionally imprecise, told in flashbacks which give us a chronology but (until nearly the end) only the murkiest of details regarding Jasmine’s culpability in her husband’s illegal actions.
As if there wasn't already enough to dislike about Jasmine French. In light of a certain recent financial crisis, a film that asks its audience to sympathize with a heroine like this is asking a lot. People like Jasmine — members of Manhattan’s cloistered elite, that storied one percent — know more wealth than many of us could ever dream of knowing, and as the realization of how much exploitation and thievery is sometimes a component in the accumulation of this wealth is brought to greater light, the tale of one rich white lady’s fall from moneyed grace becomes less about tragedy (except, as here, in a strictly Williamsinian sense) and about rightful comeuppance. Making sympathy for Jasmine even more problematic is the fact that the world she tumbles to is hardly, thanks either to Hollywood’s ignorance regarding real working class American lives, or to Woody Allen’s, in the least impoverished. Certainly Ginger’s modest, homey apartment pales in comparison to the glamorous trappings and extravagances we glimpse of Jasmine’s posh Park Avenue digs, with its ritzy accouterments, its walls painted the color of money and its high ceilings, but come on: it’s a far cry from the flophouse. Buck up, we want to scream at Jasmine. Things could be a lot worse.
Yet it is this very sense of entitlement, manifested in an actual inability to fathom a life absent the almost hedonistic indulgences to which she has become accustomed, that defines Jasmine and comprises the bulk of her character. “I don’t know how anyone can breathe with low ceilings,” bemoans Jasmine shortly after arriving at Ginger’s, a line which brilliantly exemplifies not only the cushioned position she’s coming from but also the disordered nature of her priorities: low ceilings? Really? When the alternative is no ceilings? Elsewhere, she bristles at the suggestion that she might find work as a receptionist in a dentists’s office or — only slightly more horrible — end up bagging groceries like her sister — unfathomable professions despite the stark reality of her financial situation. But the slow (then quick) unraveling of Jasmine’s mind and the vague nature of her complicity regarding her husband’s crimes offer her pardon, at least partially. Constantly swigging from a bottle of Stoli with one hand and popping Xanax with the other, eyes permanently red-rimmed or brimming tears, it becomes quickly apparent that Jasmine is falling apart, and the flashback scenes insinuate that, though recent events may have exacerbated her condition, the instability has long lurked within her, a tether pulled taut just waiting to snap. “Mentally unhinged” is a phrase one could employ to easily describe Jasmine French. “Crazy bitch” is another.
And Cate Blanchett plays her marvelously. Although any complimentary adjectives one could think of might here be employed to describe Blanchett’s performance, none of them would suffice. There are not words for the majesty here, the beauty, the integrity of this performance. It’s showy, for sure, the dial turned to eleven from the very outset, but as fearless as Blanchett is of the big emotions, the grand gestures, she remains equally attuned to the intricacies of nuance and subtleties of character. Nothing is wasted here: the tiniest flick of her eyes, the sip of vodka, seem infused with tremendous import; and what is exploited is done so excellently and, one feels, appropriately. In the end, however much we are able to care about a character as abhorrent as Jasmine is Blanchett’s doing. Sally Hawkins is luminous as Ginger, bringing unexpected zeal and freshness to a role that could easily have slipped into stock, and Alec Baldwin is efficiently smarmy as Jasmine’s husband. Smaller performances by Tammy Blanchard and Louis CK as well help bolster the film, which is sharply observed and keenly directed by Mr. Allen.
But it is not an uplifting film. As funny as it is — laugh out loud hysterical in some moments — the outlook is drear, to say the least, walking a thin line between the all-out glitz and sparkle of Allen’s Midnight In Paris and the darkly wrought suspense of Match Point. Like the latter, there is no happy ending here, at least not for Jasmine, much as there wasn’t for her predecessor, Blanche DuBois. But in many ways the end of Jasmine’s story is much crueler than the Blanche’s, who was kindly led away, albeit to a sanitarium, at Streetcar’s close. There is no one to take Jasmine’s hand, no stranger upon whom’s kindness she can rely. Instead she exits the film much as she entered it: alone, out of her mind, mumbling half-incoherently to an uninterested stranger.
