Today I finally made it to "Blue Jasmine," the Woody Allen film about a woman whose life has completely come undone. Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, the wife of a Bernie Madoff-type in the form of a perfectly cast Alec Baldwin. The card house has imploded, she's lost everything. Jasmine does the only thing she can think of: She flees New York to stay with her estranged sister, Ginger. Ginger and Jasmine were both adopted, and they couldn't be more different.
In flashbacks to her old life, we learn that Jasmine moved easily in the world of extreme wealth that her marriage offered her. In the present, people question whether Jasmine knew what kind of schemes her husband had been involved in, how much of the guilt could be laid on her.
Jasmine is not a likeable person. She is arrogant, she feels she deserves special status, and she is coming unglued. Due to her breakdown, she spends a lot of time talking to the air. She seems to feel that commonplace jobs are below her, though she takes a receptionist job she doesn't want. It's hard to understand why she didn't just go work at a high-end clothing store, but that's neither here nor there. She's condescending to her sister and dismissive of her sister's fiancé.
But Cate Blanchett is, as always, utterly fascinating to watch, and somehow she, the script, and Allen's directing conspire to make us feel empathy for her anyway, mostly by making her a victim. This doesn't really play well to a modern feminist sensibility--we don't want women to be considered to all be possible victims of a man's power. There is a sort of Jane Austen-ish dependence on a man to pull a woman out of her prescribed circumstances that I find irritating, yet it may just be true sometimes. Which is funny, because in her more anxious moments, Jasmine sounds like a manic Katherine Hepburn, who is the antithesis of a victim. And maybe even more irritatingly, I couldn't help but think how beautifully dressed she was, which goes completely against the whole point of the movie showing how shallow she really is.
Perhaps I'm too biased in Blanchett's favor to be objective here. After all, she's about my age and height, she's at least as pale as I am, and I'm prone to talking to the air quite a bit myself.
Ginger, a working-class woman who suffers financially in part due to her former brother-in-law's unethical activities, is played by Sally Hawkins. If you don't know Hawkins, you can't help but fall in love with for her performance in the quirky movie from a few years ago, "Happy-Go-Lucky."
I had seen critique of the movie in advance that mentioned Woody Allen's inability to portray working-class people beyond stereotypes. In spite of Hawkins' great performance, and a good turn by Bobby Cannavale as Ginger's fiancé Chili, they are still portrayed as rather unintelligent people, warm-hearted and well-intentioned as they may be. With some seriously bad hair. Certainly they still come off as more generous than Jasmine herself. But it's true that Allen has shortcomings in this area.
If you're into such things, it's fun to look at some of the casting choices. Ginger's ex-husband is played by Andrew Dice Clay, the misogynist comic popular in the 90s. And another 90s throwback is Doogie Howser's best friend Vinnie, also known as Max Casella, who plays Chili's buddy Eddie. Somehow I feel like all of the working-class people sound like they're from the Jersey Shore, even though this is all supposed to take place in San Francisco. I'm from Michigan, what do I know.
The film is interesting and complex, but it's also a downer. Don't go into it looking for something escapist and fun, like Allen's last outing, "Midnight in Paris." But if you are interested in great acting, go to see Blanchett and Hawkins.
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