Blue Jasmine (2013)

It was hard not to have high expectations of Blue Jasmine: the reviews have been almost unanimously positive, particularly of Cate Blanchett's performance as the deranged and dynamic lady at the core of Woody Allen's latest offering. It's true, she is excellent. She manages to be the one thing it should have been impossible for her to be: wholly unattractive. Her Jasmine is a refugee from Wall Street's upper class, desperately seeking solace at her sister's humbler home in San Francisco. But her problems swell frighteningly beyond the financial. She is a Manhattan matriarch composed entirely of artifice and beneath the cracking surface lies a mad and embittered psyche. And Allen's camera is besotted with its subject's disintegration - it closes in on Jasmine's shaking, perspiring form as she rattles her diminishing bottle of Xanax. This is a film that sweats.


For that reason, it becomes quite difficult to watch. Jasmine's physical discomfort - her trembling, crying, dripping - really gets under your skin. Gone is the gloss of Allen's European pictures; this is all about zoning in on the bodily reality of suffering. It also means that the light comedy of the earlier films is reformulated through bleak cynicism and wry asides. There aren't many easy laughs in Blue Jasmine. That said, it is, at times, wonderfully astute. A scene involving Jasmine 'babysitting' her two nephews in a diner plays beautifully with the uneasy dynamic between adult and child; once the responsibility of the former is diminished, how does dialogue operate? It is here, in front of a waiting and innocent audience, that Jasmine can finally be honest: 'there are only so many traumas a person can withstand before they take to the streets and start screaming.'

This is the tension that Allen allows to build - the location of Jasmine's breaking point becomes the central focus. Yet the film is by no means a one woman show. Sally Hawkins does a brilliant turn as Ginger, the downtrodden downgrade of a sibling that Jasmine uses for her own benefit and tries to wreck in the process. Hawkins' character is possibly the most varied - she is both drawn and repulsed by her sister's wanton consumerism and her reaction to Jasmine's judgements is what gives this film its human story. Bobby Cannavale is funny and likeable as Ginger's fiancé Chilli and Alec Baldwin does his thing as the corrupt banker-husband responsible for Jasmine's financial ruin.

Certainly, this is a film composed of strong parts, namely stellar performances and wonderfully effective photography. It might not quite be the masterpiece it is being touted as, perhaps because it is simply too rotten underneath. It has a surface that congeals, like makeup that has been left on for too long. In a manner reminiscent of Black Swan (2011), Blue Jasmine gives a sticky and painful portrayal of a breakdown. It is definitely worth the watch, but it leaves a residual discomfort that is hard to shake.