By BRITTANY PIASENTIN
Film
Blue Jasmine (M)
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins and Bobby Canavale.
WOODY Allen’s ‘Blue Jasmine’ is a witty portrait of a disgraced New York socialite and the struggles she faces when she loses everything.
After living the high life shopping, organising charity galas and throwing “the best dinner parties in New York”, Jasmine French (Cate Blanchett) is sharply thrown into another world when the fraudulent dealings of her husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) land him in jail and their millions in government hands.
Everything changes for Jasmine when she moves to San Francisco to live with her optimistic adoptive sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) in a small apartment with Ginger’s two young boys. Reaching straight for her Xanax and an alcoholic drink, Jasmine wails and exclaims throughout the building while we watch her patient and ever-sympathetic sister console her.
Ginger refers constantly to her sister’s “good genes”, despite Jasmine also being adopted with different birth parents, but Jasmine’s neurotic behaviour suggests otherwise.
Ginger is happy with her life until her sister’s wild demeanor causes her to question her passionate, loving relationship with boyfriend Chilli (Bobby Canavale).
Allen cleverly trickles information to the audience through the present narrative and use of flashbacks to Jasmine’s former glorious life. Jasmine is content with being spoiled by her attentive husband whose fake smile, charm and adoration hide his real intentions.
There is a suggestion from other characters that Jasmine has some knowledge of her husband’s dealings, but Jasmine waves it away with a flourish, exclaiming that it is all too much for her to understand.
Blanchett as Jasmine creates an anxious energy on the screen as she talks to herself, reliving old conversations, when agitated or distressed. There is a madness about her that is quirkily comic but manages to be sad and unsettling at the same time.
She spectacularly portrays Jasmine struggling to cope with her first real job while attending a computer class at night so she can become an interior designer. Through these pursuits and her desperation for her old life, she meets Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), an ambitious politician, who quickly falls for Jasmine and the new backstory she has invented for herself.
The film has been well-received by critics and audiences alike, but with a protagonist like Jasmine, who in some moments can be so unlikeable, it is not a film for everyone.
– Brittany Piasentin
